Three family members killed, suspect arrested in Philadelphia shooting
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The county's district attorney notes that a 14-year-old, alongside two other people, hid in his stepmother's house.
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Police surround the suspect's home in Trenton, N.J., Saturday, March 16, 2024. (AP)
Police have arrested a man in the state of Philadephia after he killed three family members and held another three hostage.
26-year-old Andre Gordon was located barricading in a house in Trenton, New Jersey, after he committed two separate shootings in Falls township in Bucks County.
Bucks County District Attorney, Jennifer Schorn, stated that Gordon is suspected of killing his 52-year-old stepmother, Karen Gordon, his 13-year-old sister, Kera Gordon, and the mother of his two children, 25-year-old Taylor Daniel.
Schorn noted that a 14-year-old, alongside two other people, hid in his stepmother's house, and Gordon is believed to have used a rifle to bludgeon his partner's mother, who is expected to survive her wounds.
At a news conference, the Falls township police chief Nelson Whitney stated there was “nothing that would indicate that anything like this would happen," as per AP.
Read more: Over 500 mass shootings recorded in 2023 in US
Before the arrest was made, residents of Falls township, where some of the state's richest towns are located, were ordered to shelter in their homes temporarily, but the order was lifted before 1 pm when the police located him.
According to police reports, Gordon carjacked a woman during his attempt to escape authorities.
One neighbor, Jose Rivera, who claims to have been close to Gordon, told Action News he was a boxer.
"He's a good kid," he said. "I just don't understand why he would do something like that, to be honest with you. But you never know."
1,600 children killed in 2023 over gun violence
Sputnik reported in December, citing the Gun Violence Archive (GVA), that in 2023, over 42,000 individuals in the United States were killed due to gun violence.
The reported figure encompassed 650 incidents classified as mass shootings, 40 instances of mass murders, 1,161 cases of defensive gun use, and 1,543 unintentional shootings, according to GVA.
GVA also disclosed that more than 1,600 children aged 0-17 lost their lives in gun violence, with an additional 4,444 sustaining injuries. The data further revealed that 46 law enforcement officers and 1,412 suspects were killed in gun violence incidents and officer-involved incidents, respectively.
Even more alarming is the revelation that the number of mass shooting cases involving four or more individuals killed or wounded has nearly tripled over the past decade. In 2014, the United States recorded 272 such cases, but by 2020, that number had surged to 610. It has been on the rise since then. This trajectory suggests that the years of President Joe Biden's tenure witnessed the highest rate of mass shootings in recent memory.
