Woman, 23, critically wounded in East Germantown shooting

A 23-year-old woman was clinging to life Thursday night after police say she was shot in the chest while sitting in her car in East Germantown.

Cops said the woman was in her car with a friend on Duval Street near Baynton just before 6 p.m. when a gunman fired two shots at her through her driver's window. One bullet hit the woman in the left side of her chest, said Chief Inspector Scott Small.

The victim's friend, who was uninjured, moved the bleeding woman out of the driver's seat and jumped behind the wheel, rushing her to Einstein's Crisis Response Center at Germantown Community Health Services, on Penn Boulevard off of the intersection of Wister and Olney avenues. Small said hospital personnel there alerted police to the shooting, but the woman's friend left and drove her to Albert Einstein Medical Center instead.

She remained at Einstein in critical condition and was undergoing surgery around 8 p.m., Small said.

The scene on Duval Street was marked by two .40-caliber shell casings, a broken cell phone and shattered glass from the victim's car window, Small said. The man who drove her to the hospital remained there, and the car was being held there as a scene.

Police said a gun was in the front seat of that car in plain view when the victim was brought to Einstein, but said they do not believe the man who drove her there was connected to the shooting. The shooter is described as a man wearing a blue puffy jacket driving a newer-model, very clean silver Chevy Impala.

The victim's friend was taken to the Northwest Detective Division to be interviewed as a witness to the shooting, and cops were still working to determine what motivated it around 8 p.m. Thursday.