Must be a slow news day at The Philadelphia Inquirer, because the newspaper has actually covered, albeit briefly, three homicides today:

3 people have died among 10 shot in less than 7 hours in Philly

The shootings in the first seven hours of Saturday morning included a double homicide as well as a separate killing, all within three hours. No arrests were reported.

by Diane Mastrull | Saturday, September 3, 2022

The Labor Day weekend got off to a violent start with 10 people shot, three fatally, within the first seven hours of Saturday morning, according to police.

The first shooting was reported shortly before 1 a.m. at Chew and Locust Avenues in East Germantown, where a 26-year-old male was shot once in the chest, police said. He was transported by private vehicle to Einstein Medical Center Philadelphia, where he was reported in stable condition, police said

I accessed the story at 6:10 PM EDT. The Inky somehow thinks it’s edgy or new wave or something silly like that to not timestamp their articles, and it only states “Published 3 hours ago”, so it hit the newspaper’s website sometime between 2:00 PM and 3:10 PM. There has been plenty of daylight since then, and it’s still daylight as I type this, so there’s plenty of time left before the skies grow dark.

About two and a half hours later, just after 3:30 a.m., two men were killed at 52nd Street and Woodland Avenue in Kingsessing. Police said one, believed to be 20 to 30 years old, was shot once in the back of the head and was pronounced dead by medics at the scene. A 39-year-old man was shot multiple times throughout the body and was pronounced dead just before 4 a.m. at Penn Presbyterian Medical Center, police said.

There’s more at the original, detailing shootings at 4:11 AM, 4:56 AM, and “an hour later,” before getting to this:

4400 North Franklin Street, at the intersection with 700 block of West Cayuga. Someone has already put himself in jail to keep the neighborhood bad guys out. Click to enlarge.

The morning’s third homicide came just after 6:30 a.m., when a 45-year-old man was shot multiple times in the 700 block of West Cayuga Street in Hunting Park, police said. He was pronounced dead at 6:47 a.m. at Temple.

I recall hearing about a body being found on Friday as well, but can’t document it. Just counting the three I have documented, that takes the city to 367 homicides, as of Saturday morning; who knows what Saturday evening will bring?

Monday, September 6, 2021, was the end of the Labor Day holiday weekend last year, and at that point the city had seen 363 homicides; city is already four above that total. The holiday weekend ends on Monday, August 5^th, one day earlier this year.

The end of the Labor Day holiday saw the end of the ‘lull’ in city murders last year, but, starting after the holiday weekend was over, Philly saw 199 murders in 116 days, a rate of 1.7155 per day, driving the yearly rate higher, and ending with 562 bodies littering the city’s mean streets. It’s been end-of-summer warm in the City of Brotherly Love, with no rain forecast for either Sunday of Labor Day, so plenty of decent weather for the bad guys to be out on the streets shooting people.

Current homicide rate as of Saturday morning: 1.4919 per day, which works out to 544.53 by the end of the year. Calculated another way, 576.13 is the projected number, based on the increased killing rate last year. Philly will finish the year with a homicide total that is either first or second in all-time murders.