Update: July 9, 5:55 p.m.
PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — Someone wearing a ski mask and a bulletproof vest, armed with two guns and extra magazines of ammunition, killed five people and injured a woman and three children, in a mass shooting in Kingsessing Monday night before surrendering to authorities, police say.
Gunfire erupted near 56th Street and Chester Avenue around 8:30 p.m. Based on witness accounts, interviews and video evidence, police say the suspect was observed holding an AR-15 assault rifle at several locations near 56th Street, between Chester and Springfield avenues.
The suspect shot aimlessly at occupied cars and people walking on the street, according to Staff Inspector Ernest Ransom.
While some responding police officers tended to victims at several locations, other officers ran toward the sound of additional gunfire, Ransom said. Near the 1600 block of Frazier Street, police say they spotted the suspect, who continued to fire. Officers arrested the suspect, who they later identified as 40-year-old Kimbrady Carriker, in the rear alleyway of Springfield Avenue.
"I want to emphasize that we currently have no reason to believe that there are additional suspects or an ongoing threat to the community as it relates to this incident. We are confident that we have the individual responsible in custody," said Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw.
In addition to the rifle, police said they recovered a 9mm handgun. They say Carriker also had a several magazines of ammunition and a police scanner.
Carriker has one prior gun conviction.
7 shot, 5 dead; 2 more injured
In total, five males died in this attack, including a teenager. Police released their identities on Tuesday:
— 15-year-old Da'Juan Brown
— 20-year-old Lashyd Merritt
— 29-year-old Dymir Stanton
— 31-year-old Joseph Wamah, Jr.
— 59-year-old Ralph Moralis
Six people suffering from gunshot wounds were transported to Penn Presbyterian Medical Center, Ransom said. Four were pronounced dead, and two of the victims are currently listed in stable condition.
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Police initially said four people died, but family members later discovered Wamah. Police say he was alone in his home on 56th Street when he was killed, just 44 hours before the mass shooting.
Police say on July 2, around 2 a.m., they responded to calls of gunshots and were dispatched near 1600 North 56th Street. The incident, however, was on the 1600 block of South 56th Street. Police did not find a shooter or signs of gunshots in their investigation. They believe Wamah was killed about 90 minutes before the call.
One of the two victims in stable condition is a 13-year-old boy. The other is a 2-year-old boy who was hit in the leg. His mother was driving him and his twin brother home when Carriker shot at their car. The mother, 33, and the other 2-year-old boy, sustained minor injuries from shattered glass.
"None of the victims engaged the suspect or were aware the suspect was going to inflict this act of violence upon them," said Ransom. Based on the evidence, police believe the Carriker carried out the shootings "knowingly and intentionally."
District Attorney Larry Krasner on Tuesday said Carriker will be facing multiple counts of murder, aggravated assault and first-degree felony weapons charges, among others, adding more specific information will be available on Wednesday.
Police are also investigating a second person, who they took into custody for allegedly shooting at Carriker. Krasner said authorities have no reason to believe the second man did anything illegal by firing his gun.
"When you're under fire in a mass shooting, there are rights to protect others and rights to protect yourself," Krasner said.
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'This country needs to reexamine its conscience'
The shootings took place over several city blocks. Investigators marked off a two-by-four block radius and found more than 50 spent shell casings.
With caution tape stretching from one end of the neighborhood to the other Monday night, every front porch was packed with neighbors — crying, talking to one another, trying to console each other — just trying to figure out what happens next.
At a holiday weekend block party in Baltimore, about 90 miles (145 kilometers) to the southwest of Philadelphia, two people were killed and 28 others were wounded in a shooting. More than half of the victims were 18 or younger, officials said.
About four hours after the Philadelphia shooting, gunfire at a neighborhood festival in Fort Worth, Texas, killed three people and wounded eight.
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Several Philadelphia officials expressed outrage, many pointing the finger directly at Harrisburg and Washington.
"I'm frustrated and outraged that mass shootings like this continue to happen in communities across the United States. This country needs to reexamine its conscience and find out how to get guns out of dangerous people's hands," Kenney said. "And I was today at ... Independence Hall, where they wrote that Constitution, and the Second Amendment was never intended to protect this.
"This was a terrible tragic situation that has traumatized the community. We are begging Congress to protect lives and do something about America's gun problem."
In a statement, City Council President Darrell Clarke stressed that the shooter was armed with a military-style assault rifle — a "weapon designed for war."
"It was on the streets of Southwest Philly, mowing down innocent Philadelphians, because Washington for years has put the interests of the Gun industry over the safety of Americans," he wrote. "It was used in an act of murderous carnage last night because the Supreme Court is siding with the gun lobby over cities and states seeking stronger gun laws to protect their citizens. Last night’s profanity of violence reminds us once again: Philadelphia needs the right to protect and defend its citizens with stronger, local gun laws, because no one else is coming to our rescue."
Krasner described the scene on Tuesday in terms of silent and sacred hallowed ground.
"I saw every porch empty. I saw every door closed. I saw every [window] where there was a curtain pulled. I saw no kids playing. I saw a bicycle that had been left there from the time of the shooting, sitting on a corner, apparently untouched for 12 or more hours — nobody coming out to move it, to take it, to touch it, or anything else, as if everybody understood what happened here was so horrible that, for right now, this is a desert. And for right now, everything that we associate with celebrating Fourth of July is off."
Krasner echoed Kenney in his frustration with lawmakers.
"It is disgusting, the lack of proper gun legislation that we have in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. I cannot agree more heartily with the mayor: It is disgusting that you can go to New Jersey and find a whole list of reasonable gun regulation that we don't have; that you can go to Delaware, and there's almost as long a list of reasonable gun legislation that we don't have," Krasner said.
"Some of that legislation might have made a difference here. And it is time for everybody in our Legislature — including the ones who would like to walk around with an 'AR-15' lapel pin — it is time for every one of them to face the voters. And if they're not going to do something, then voters are going to have to vote them out. Because that's what that lapel pin means. It means 'Vote me out. I am against you. And I'm against your safety.' And a lot of us have had enough of that. I can tell you I certainly have had enough of it."
The Philadelphia violence is the country’s 29th mass killing in 2023, according to a database maintained by The Associated Press and USA Today in partnership with Northeastern University, the highest on record by this time in the year.
The number of people killed in such events is also the highest on record by this time in the year.
There have been more than 550 mass killings in the United States since 2006, according to the database, in which at least 2,900 people have died and at least 2,000 people have been injured.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
CORRECTION: A previous version of this story misspelled Brown's first name.