New Shooting in the U.S. Leaves Three Dead in Philadelphia

On Saturday night, a shooting took place on a busy downtown street in the city of Philadelphia, the largest in the northeastern U.S. state of Pennsylvania, left three people dead and 11 wounded, local police confirmed on Sunday.

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Police patrolling the downtown Philadelphia area reported hearing multiple gunshots and seeing several people firing into a large crowd.

At a press conference Sunday morning, police inspector D.F. Pace noted that an officer shot one of the suspects at close range, but it is unclear if the subject was hit.

Two men and a woman were later pronounced dead at an area hospital, WTXF-TV reported. The condition of the injured victims was unknown, the TV station said.

South Street is "known to be an entertainment corridor" with multiple bars and restaurants, inspector D.F. Pace said.

"You can imagine there were hundreds of people enjoying South Street, as they do every weekend, when this shooting broke out," the inspector told reporters.

Two pistols were recovered at the scene, including one with an extended magazine, plus "numerous" shell casings were found.

Several witnesses described the "chaos" in the area as people fled the scene.

"Once it started, I didn't think it was going to stop," Joe Smith, 23, told The Philadelphia Inquirer. Smith said he was standing outside the Theatre of the Living Arts on South Street when the shots rang out.

Pace detailed that South Street is patrolled by numerous police officers as part of a standard deployment in the entertainment district on Friday and Saturday nights, particularly during the summer, WTXF reported.