A 16-year-old girl was killed and two other young men were injured by stray bullets in New York during a gun battle between two men. According to the reconstruction of the police chief, Keechant Sewell, the girl was returning home from her school in the Bronx, north of Manhattan, accompanied by another 16-year-old and a 17-year-old boy.
At an intersection they ran into a man who was arguing with another on the opposite sidewalk and who pulled out a gun and started shooting in bursts. The girl was shot in the chest and the other two in the leg and buttocks. They were transported to the hospital, but the 16-year-old didn’t make it. The other two young people are hospitalized in stable conditions. At the moment the police have not yet arrested anyone but are viewing the footage of the surveillance cameras and have assured that those responsible will soon be brought to justice. It is the second time in a week that young people in New York have been victims of stray bullets fired in the middle of the street.
On March 31, a 12-year-old boy was killed in Brooklyn while eating in a parked car with a 20-year-old woman who was injured and an eight-year-old girl fortunately unharmed. In the metropolis of nine million people, crime increased dramatically during the pandemic in 2020. This year the situation worsened further: from January 1 to early April, the number of shootings in New York rose from 260 to 296 compared to in the same period of 2021.