Gunfire erupts at city playground for 6th time in just over 1 month

In a city where bullets fly on a near-daily basis, some of the places that are supposed to be safe havens - playgrounds and rec centers - are becoming shooting scenes at an alarming rate.

Before dusk on Monday, gunfire erupted at a city playground for the sixth time in just more than a month. Police said an 18-year-old boy was shot dead on a crowded playground at Cecil B. Moore Recreation Center, on 22nd Street near Huntingdon in North Philadelphia. He was the second teen killed at a playground in three days.

Chief Inspector Scott Small said police were called to the playground just before 6 p.m. When they arrived, they found the victim lying on his back on the pavement, unresponsive.

He was rushed to Temple University Hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 6:11 p.m. of a single gunshot wound through the heart, cops said.

Small said about 25 people were on the playground at the time of the shooting, not including the youth football team practicing on an adjacent field and people playing pickup basketball games on nearby courts. Witnesses told cops they heard one shot, and most people who were there at the time scattered. Two witnesses were taken to speak with homicide detectives, police said.

The shooter was described as a 20-year-old man who is 5 feet 7, about 200 pounds and was wearing a multicolored sweater, blue jeans and multicolored sneakers. He was last seen westbound on Huntingdon Street from 22nd on a bicycle, accompanied by another young man, also riding a bike.

As investigators scoured the cordoned-off playground for evidence, football practice carried on at the field nearby like normal.

But across from the practice, a young man who identified himself as the victim's cousin stepped up to the yellow crime-scene tape around 8 p.m. and asked a policeman on the scene, "Is he gone?"

When the cop nodded, the man dropped to the ground, crying.

On Friday night, a 17-year-old boy was shot to death at a playground in East Mount Airy.

Last month, a 15-year-old boy suffered a gunshot wound at a basketball court in Tacony Aug. 24. Ten days prior, a 37-year-old man was fatally shot on the playground at Parkside-Evans Recreation Center in West Philadelphia, and on Aug. 4, two men and a teen were wounded in a shooting on a basketball court at East Germantown's Wister Recreation Center. Two days before that, a man and a teen where shot at Pennrose Playground at 12th Street and Susquehanna Avenue.

The recreation centers did not have surveillance cameras in several of the shootings, according to police. During a City Council hearing on rec-center violence in mid-August, city officials said they planned to spend $375,000 to install surveillance cameras at 30 city recreation centers.

No arrests were made in Monday's homicide.

Contact Morgan Zalot at zalotm@phillynews.com or 215-854-5928. Follow her on Twitter @morganzalot. Read her blog at PhillyConfidential.com.