Police: 13-year-old girl shot while inside Southwest Philadelphia home visiting family
PHILADELPHIA - Philadelphia police are investigating a shooting that left a teenage girl injured in the southwest section of the city on Tuesday.
Just before 1 a.m., officers responded to South 65th Street where they say they found a 13-year-old girl with a gunshot would to the shoulder.
Authorities say she was taken to CHOP and placed in stable condition after doctors removed the bullet from her shoulder.
According to Chief Inspector Scott Small, she was shot while inside a family member's home with five other children between the ages of eight and 16 and adults.
Small says the girl does not live at the property but was visiting family members. Adriane Brown, the victim's aunt, owns the house, and says in her 16 years of living in the southwest Philadelphia home, she could have never imagined something like this happening.
Brown says her niece and her three siblings were watching tv in the living room when they heard gunfire.
Investigators say the girl was standing a few feet from the living room window when more than ten shots were fired into the window.
"It sounded like ‘pop pop pop, pop pop pop.’ I mean like steady. My niece and nephew were sitting in the front chair, he jumped up and ran, but when she got up, that's when she got shot. All I heard was her yelling," said Brown.
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A man, who is believed to have been the target of the shooting, was being chased by the shooters down 66th Street when he tried to open the door of a nearby bar, then ran into Brown's home prior to the shooting, according to Small.
Authorities say witnesses saw two men get out of a car and start shooting into the home.
"He saw our light on, he ran here and pushed in and when he pushed in, they started shooting," said Brown. "It was a black car, they rolled down the windows, and all my nephew said was that he saw two guns, and they started shooting."
Investigators say dozens of shell casings were discovered at the scene. Now, Brown is left to clean up her bullet-riddled home.
Brown says she is grateful her niece is okay, but she can't help but think about how much worse this could have been.
"These people are crazy out here. They don't value life, it doesn't make sense. They just shoot up. I mean, we have babies in here, kids in here, animals in here. It doesn't make sense."