In Philadelphia, a teenager was killed near a football game

PHILADELPHIA — A 14-year-old boy was killed and four other students were wounded in a shooting outside a high school in northwest Philadelphia after a football scrimmage, authorities said.

Police said players were walking off the field behind Roxboro High School after a fight involving three schools when at least two men opened fire shortly after 4:30 p.m. Tuesday before fleeing on foot.

Police said the 14-year-old boy, who was shot in the chest, was pronounced dead shortly after 5 p.m. Wednesday at Einstein Medical Center. A 17-year-old wounded in the arm and leg and a 14-year-old wounded in the thigh are in stable condition. There was no immediate word on the fourth student taken to the hospital; another student was treated at the scene for a bullet wound.

Deputy Police Commissioner John Stanford told reporters that the players were leaving a fight involving Roxborough High School, Northeast High School and Boys’ Latin School that had just ended when the shooting began.

He said the boys were targeted when they were doing “one of the things we encourage our kids to do” and one family’s son “won’t make it home today”.

The arrests were not immediately reported. Stanford said police will be pulling images from several surveillance cameras in the area. He said investigators will also be looking at social media and gathering information to see if the shooting could be a motive for what happened earlier in the day.

School officials said they will have a trauma team available to assist students and staff.

“Schools used to be a safe place … and to see that now our young people can’t even come into a fight and get shot is absolutely unacceptable,” said Kevin Bethel, chief of school safety for the School District of Philadelphia. .

“It was a cowardly act today to go out and ambush people coming off the field. Does it make you tough? I think not,” he said.

District Attorney Larry Krasner said he was “absolutely outraged.”

“I’m shocked — honestly, I’m a little shocked,” Krasner said. – What is happening here is terrible. Obviously, my heart goes out to all the families, all the students—I can’t even look at the principal to imagine what she’s going through… Schools have to be the answer. We keep kids in schools so they don’t get involved in shootings.”

The shooting came hours after Mayor Jim Kenney signed an executive order banning guns and deadly weapons in the city’s indoor and outdoor recreation areas, including parks, basketball courts and swimming pools. The ordinance is the latest attempt by city officials to regulate guns within city limits, which is complicated by Pennsylvania’s preemptive action law, which prohibits municipalities from adopting or enforcing their own stricter gun regulations.