A 16-year-old was fatally shot Thursday morning inside an apartment building in the Shipley neighborhood of Southeast Washington, D.C. police said.

       Police did not identify the victim pending notification of his relatives.

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       The shooting occurred about 11:30 a.m. in the 2200 block of Savannah Terrace SE. A police spokeswoman said officers responding to calls for sounds of gunshots found the youth in a hallway. He was pronounced dead at the scene.

       The apartments are located near Suitland Parkway and Alabama Avenue, near the border with Maryland. Police did not describe a possible motive.

       “It appears the individual was targeted,” said Cmdr. Leslie Parsons, head of the D.C. police criminal investigation bureau.

       Homicides in the District are up about 8 percent this year. The teen killed Thursday is the fourth person under 18 slain since January. Two 16-year-olds were fatally shot in February and in March, and a 16-year-old was killed in April. A dozen youths were killed last year, 11 in 2020, and 14 in 2019.

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       Gun violence has helped put crime at the top of residents’ concerns and political priorities. A Washington Post poll released in February found that 36 percent of respondents cited crime, violence or guns as the city’s top problem. That was twice as many as in a 2019 Post poll.

       Recently, an independent D.C. agency released a report outlining a gun violence reduction strategy for the city, hoping the recommendations would decrease violent crime in the near-term and begin alleviating the socioeconomic factors that give rise to violence in D.C. over time.

       Hours after the youth was shot in Southeast Washington, D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) made an appearance in the Shaw neighborhood in Northwest to announce arrests of members of a suspected drug gang.

       Noting that case and the killing of the youth on the other side of the city, Bowser said: “People are tired of gun violence. We’re tired of mass shootings, and in a city like ours, we’re tired of neighborhood violence.”