PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — For the second time this week, gunfire injured someone on SEPTA.
One person is in custody after police said he shot a man Friday morning on board a Market-Frankford train in West Philadelphia.
It happened around 7:40 a.m. as an eastbound El train approached 52nd Street Station.
SEPTA Police Chief Chuck Lawson said three men on board the train started to fight with a fourth man.
“Three individuals engage another male in a physical altercation on the train,” he said. “That male who was being assaulted produced a handgun and fired, striking one of the assailants in the shoulder.”
The 19-year-old who was shot in the arm was taken to Penn Presbyterian Hospital in stable condition.
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Lawson said the other men in the fight managed to subdue the gunman and hold him down until police arrived and arrested him. Two of the men in the initial fight were also taken in for questioning. Police are looking for one other person that was involved in the fight.
Friday’s shooting comes two days after another on a Broad Street Line platform, which wounded a man and a woman.
SEPTA has been deploying more officers on the system, but he says this incident is a reflection of the volume of violence in the city. Lawson said the department is budgeted for 270 officers, but the Transit Police Force is only about 80% staffed.
SEPTA General Manager Leslie Richards, at a news conference Friday, said there are issues here that are much bigger than SEPTA.
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"Particularly, more and more people going right for their guns when they don’t like something they hear, or they feel disrespected.”
Richards added that crime on SEPTA represents less than 1% of the criminal activity in the city, but it gets talked about much more.
“We really are a collateral victim from the crime that is going on in the city right now.”
She feels safety is a major reason ridership hasn’t fully rebounded from the pandemic.
“I think it’s very clear that the perception of crime is preventing people from using our system.”