The Philadelphia Police (Pennsylvania, USA) believe that the mass shooting that left three dead and 11 wounded on Saturday night in a popular neighborhood of the city was caused by a argument between two individuals carrying firearms.
“These individuals began shooting at each other, and both sustained injuries, one of them fatal,” Philadelphia Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw said at a news conference on Sunday.
The authorities explained that the three deceased people are two African-American men and one woman, between 22 and 34 years of age.
Another 11 people, including four minors, were also injured, according to local media.
Sheriff Outlaw recounted how a police officer who was present at the scene at the time of the shooting fired at one of the attackers, probably wounding him.
The attacker dropped his weapon and fled, and has yet to be identified or apprehended.
Authorities are offering a $20,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of the suspect.
“We are using all available resources to determine what happened, not just last night, but what is behind the violence with firearms in this city,” defended the commissioner.
The one in Philadelphia is one of multiple mass shootings – those in which four or more people are affected, in addition to the attacker – that have taken place in the last 24 hours in the United States.
In Chattanooga, Tennessee, 3 people were killed and 14 were injured in a shooting at a nightclub, and in Phoenix, Arizona, a teenage girl was killed and eight others were injured in a shooting at a shopping mall.
The debate on the control of firearms intensified in the country after the death on May 24 of 19 children and two teachers in an elementary school in Uvalde (Texas) by shots of an 18-year-old boy.
The House of Representatives is scheduled to vote next week on a gun control package that includes, among other things, a ban on magazines with more than ten bullets.
Of the two firearms seized after last night’s shooting in Philadelphia, one had an extended magazine.
The divide between Democrats and Republicans makes it difficult to pass gun control measures in Congress, although there are expectations after a group of senators from both parties held meetings in recent weeks to try to agree on legislation on the issue.
The president of the United States, Joe Biden, has urged lawmakers to “do something” in the face of what he considers “an epidemic of gun violence.”