Two-year-old child among seven shot outside school in Philadelphia

Shots rang out in Strawberry Mansion neighbourhood around 6pm near James G Blaine school

File Philadelphia police officers investigate the fatal shooting of a Temple University police officer near the campus on 18 Feb (AP)

Seven people, including a two-year-old girl, were shot and wounded on Thursday evening near an elementary school in north Philadelphia, police said.

Shots rang out in the city’s Strawberry Mansion neighbourhood around 6pm near the James G Blaine school. Philadelphia police said they found nearly 30 spent shell casings at 31st and Norris.

The two-year-old girl suffered a gunshot wound in her left thigh and was taken to the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. She was in a stable condition.

Among the five teenage boys injured, a 15-year-old who was shot twice in the chest and once in the right side of his body remained in a critical condition. He was taken to Temple University Hospital.

Another 13-year-old and two 16-year-olds suffered injuries in their limbs and were reported to be in a stable condition.

One or more shooters are at large and the motive for the shooting is not immediately known.

“This has been a fairly quiet portion of the 22nd district for quite some time now,” said Philadelphia police commissioner Danielle Outlaw. “At this point we’re piecing everything together to figure out if this is retaliatory, if some of those victims were intended or not, but it’s still really early to tell.”

Commissioner Outlaw said the shooting occurred just a few hundred feet away from an elementary school but the incident did not appear to have started there.

“As a parent myself I understand the fear that people have,” Commissioner Outlaw said.

The seventh victim of the shooting was a 31-year-old woman who was shot twice in her left leg and remained in a stable condition at the hospital.

Philadelphia School Board president Reginald Streater said the shooting took place as a non-school event was ending.

This is the third shooting in nearly one week in Philadelphia. On Tuesday, two teenagers were injured in gunfire on the 1900 block of West Montgomery Avenue. The boys remained in a critical condition.

On 18 February, a Temple University police officer was fatally shot. A suspect Miles Pfeffer, 18, was arrested for shooting officer Christopher Fitzgerald.