SEVEN SHOT DEAD IN PHILADELPHIA

Three wounded in home where police said drug sales took place.

PHILADELPHIA -- Seven people were fatally shot Thursday night at an
apparently deserted home where there had been recent drug sales,
police said. Three other people were wounded.

Four people wearing masks broke into the house and shot the victims,
according to interviews with survivors in the hospital, said Capt.
James Brady of the Homicide Division.

No suspects had been immediately arrested and no weapon had been
immediately recovered, police said.

Police Commissioner John Timoney said that one veteran police
official told him it was the highest number of deaths in the city
resulting from a single shooting incident in the official's memory.

That official, Deputy Police Commissioner Sylvester Johnson,
confirmed residents' reports that there had been drug activity at the
house.

"They started selling drugs out here two or three days ago," Johnson
said. Two of the victims were selling drugs, and a small amount of
crack cocaine was found in the house, Johnson said.

Timoney said Mayor John F. Street, who also visited the scene, told
him to "spare no expense in uncovering who did this awful crime."

Six men were confirmed dead in the dining room of the home and a
seventh person, a woman, died later at a hospital. The shooting in
the Mill Creek section of the city was reported at 8:12 p.m.

One nearby resident described the house, about 200 feet away from
Martha Washington Elementary School, as "an average drug house."

"It's sad," said Eugene Whiters, who lives a block away, adding that
such violence was not surprising in the area. The house where the
shooting happened was among a group of about a dozen dilapidated
homes with boarded-up windows, awnings falling down, and overgrown
lawns littered with fallen bricks.

One man said police called his family at home to notify them that his
nephew was shot dead in the house.

"These are bad times," the man said.

Police did not immediately release the names of the victims.

As police remained on the scene Thursday night, neighbors gathered,
several crying and yelling, trying to get information about family
members who they believed might have been in the house.

"I seen my little daughter running up the street," said a woman who
declined to give her name. "She just said some guys ran past her with
a gun. I told her to go in the house."

Four victims were taken to the Hospital of the University of
Pennsylvania, according to a hospital spokeswoman. One of them later
died, police said.

Tina Washington, 44, looking for her 23-year-old son who she thought
may have been in the area, said she had often pulled young adults off
the corner to get them away from the drug activity.

"You pray, and you talk to them, and you keep talking to them until
you're blue in the face," she said.

The shooting came two days after seven people were killed in a
shooting rampage at an office in Wakefield, Mass., north of Boston.
Prosecutors say software engineer Michael McDermott opened fire on
co-workers, emptying at least 37 rounds in no more than eight minutes.