In less than four days the number of gun deaths in the city of Dayton in 2013 more than doubled from three to seven.

The latest death came Friday afternoon when Willy Boddie Jr., 28, was shot in a car near a car wash at the intersection of Philadelphia Drive and West Riverview Avenue.

Earlier in the week, a mother of two, a 95-year-old grandfather and a 29-year-old man became the most recent faces of a surge in gun violence across the city that has shattered the windows of dozens of houses and injured nearly 20 people since the first of the year.

Dayton Police Chief Richard Biehl called the often indiscriminate gun violence “outrageous behavior,” and said Thursday police will not be satisfied until they can bring these investigations to an end.

Marlon Shackelford, an intervention specialist with the Community Initiative to Reduce Gun Violence said this gun violence is unacceptable.

“We cannot allow this to happen,” he said at the scene of Friday’s shooting. “It’s going to take an entire community… but we have to save our community.”

On Tuesday night, police responded to a duplex at 160 W. Parkwood Drive and found 27-year-old Jillian Miles shot to death on the floor. Her 2-year-old son and 1-year-old daughter were unattended in the home. Detectives on Tuesday said the motive in Miles’ death was still unclear, but they were following leads.

The next afternoon, homicide detectives were called to 1544 Hochwalt Ave. to investigate the death of 95-year-old Oscar Beason, found shot to death at the bottom of a flight of stairs. The father of five and grandfather of 12 may have been killed several days earlier. His son said Beason was the victim of a 2003 home invasion at the same address where he was pistol-whipped. The then 87-year-old attempted to fight off his attacker with a screwdriver.

The night ended with detectives responding to Good Samaritan Hospital where 29-year-old Jason Rutledge died from a gunshot wound sustained at vacant house a few blocks away at 2060 Ravenwood Ave. Police said the house may have been used for parties but did not disclose any motive or possible suspects in the case.

Tuesday to Wednesday was the deadliest two days in the city since 2010 when three people were killed in just under 48 hours between late May 27 and May 29.

The city’s homicide total for the year is at eight, including one person who was killed by police and one whose death was ruled a justifiable homicide early this week. The other six were all unsolved and no arrests had been made as of Friday afternoon.

But the death toll is just a small piece of a bigger picture that is dominated by bullets — sometimes as many as 40 at a time — being fired into residences and cars.

Since Jan. 1, there have been 34 aggravated assaults reported to Dayton police in which a gun was fired. That’s in contrast to 16 in the first two months of 2012, 14 in the same period in 2011 and 18 in 2010.

“There is a real spike in aggravated assaults and it’s all being driven by these series of shootings into habitations. There is no question that’s driving the violence right now,” Biehl said. “There is definitely a pattern involving a core group of offenders that have been involved in multiple incidents of shooting into habitations.”

In many of the shootings, which have been concentrated on the northwest side of Dayton, no one was injured. But there has been at least one innocent casualty.

Matthew Anderson died in his car on Jan. 31 eight blocks from 4000 Prescott Avenue where he was reportedly shot as someone fired into a house for the second time that day.

Biehl said police have identified a group of individuals believed to be responsible for the series of retaliation shootings plaguing that area of town and Anderson, 20, isn’t associated with any of them.

“He looks to be just an innocent casualty,” Biehl said.

He said the main groups fueling this spike in violence have been identified by police and are individuals with a history of being involved in gun violence. Officers have been deployed to do targeted patrols in the most affected areas of the city in an attempt to stem the tide of shootings, he said.