After reporting a 40 percent drop in year-to-date homicides across the city throughout the first three months of 2013, the latest Philadelphia Police data shows a 29 percent month-to-month increase in April.

At the Gun Crisis Reporting Project, we tracked 92 shooting victims last month, based on original reporting, media reports and other sources. Eighteen victims were pronounced dead on the day they were shot and 21 more were initially reported in critical condition.

Three women were among those killed. We counted 28 victims who were reported to have suffered multiple gunshot wounds, including four people who were shot at least five times each.

Multiple gunshot victims were reported during nine incidents, including one in which four people were shot and another in which three teens were shot, one of them fatally.

We counted 12 teenage shooting victims altogether, including two 16-year-olds who were the youngest victims reported last month. The oldest victim reported was 56 and the average age of victims reported was 28.

Our count excludes suicides and accidental self-inflicted shootings.

Police statistics also report an 18 percent monthly increase in aggravated assaults with guns and a nine percent increase in robberies with guns during April.

Earlier this month, we reported 25 shooting incidents, 33 victims and at least seven gun deaths in the span of one week. In one 24-hour stretch, two people were killed and five were wounded.

As of Friday morning, police data still indicated a 27-percent year-to-date decline in homicides.

So far in May, we have tracked seven more shooting, including three overnight.

The Gun Crisis Reporting Project is an award-winning, independent, nonprofit journalism community striving to illuminate the epidemic of homicide by gunfire in Philadelphia — and to find solutions.

We do our best to inform readers who seek more information on gun violence incidents, issues and solutions. We illuminate groups and individuals working to prevent gun violence — and provide professional support. And we focus on solutions when we meet officials, convene communities, visit colleges and universities or advise journalists covering gun violence in Philadelphia.

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