NYC sees 15 shootings in 15-hour span as gun violence surge continues
New York City’s plague of gun crime continued this weekend — with 15 people shot in the same number of hours since midday Saturday, police sources told The Post.
The shootings — including a 21-year-old man left fighting for his life after being shot in the head while sitting in a car in Sheepshead Bay early Sunday — were more in one day than the whole of the same week last year, sources said.
They capped 43 shootings so far this week — more than triple last year’s tally of 13 for the same period, sources said.
In one, a 41-year-old man identified by neighbors as Thomas Gonzalez was shot in the chest in the East Village as at least three people rode up on bicycles — firing a barrage of at least nine shots, sources said.
A neighbor at the Bracetti Plaza on East 4th Street said Gonzales had been visiting family members — and was shot just after 2:30 a.m. as he sat chatting to friends in seats near a kids’ play area.
“He’s a good man. A strong man,” the neighbor said.
Gonzalez was still talking to people after he was hit, and his injuries are not thought to be life-threatening, police sources said.
Early Sunday in Brownsville, meanwhile, a 23-year-old man told cops he was shot in the right leg after accidentally bumping into someone who pulled a gun and started firing, sources said.
In Queens, at least three people were injured after a fight just after midnight in the World’s Fair Marina parking lot in Corona, source say.
A 26-year-old man was hit in the chest and arm and taken by ambulance to Elmhurst Hospital with non-life-threatening injuries, the sources said. Two others later came on their own to the same hospital — a 38-year-old who was also hit in the chest and a 28-year-old in the arm, the sources said, with both also thought to be non-life-threatening, the sources said.
Also in Queens, a 39-year-old man was shot in the chest just before midnight while in a car in Far Rockaway by someone who drove up in a grey SUV, sources say. He was taken to Jamaica Hospital with injuries not thought to be life-threatening, sources said.
Commissioner Dermot Shea has blamed bail reform and prisoner releases over the coronavirus pandemic for the alarming rise in gun crime, which has brought increased criticism for Mayor Bill de Blasio.
But a Post analysis of department data found that most people released under the criminal justice reforms or amid the pandemic had no known ties to the bloodshed — with criminal justice experts saying the cops should focus on the flow of illegal guns into the city instead of playing the “blame game.”
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