Bloody Labor Day Weekend in New York City: 47 injured and 39 dead

[The_Ripper]

Shaquan Walters (above), 11, was shot at this Bronx house.

In one of the bloodiest weekends in recent city history, 31 people were brutally shot in roughly 48 hours this weekend -- including three kids at a house party-turned-shooting gallery in The Bronx.

25 people had been shot as of Sunday night, but by early Monday morning, six more people were shot in three separate incidents in Brooklyn.

Four people were shot at 12:45 a.m. at what appeared to be a barbecue on East 54th Street. One of the victims, 18-year-old Tyrief Gary, has died. The other three are in stable condition.

A man and a woman were each shot in the chest at 4:24 a.m. and 6 a.m., the first at Linden Boulevard and Nostrand Ave and the second at 57 Empire Boulevard. Both victims were taken to Kings County hospital where they're in critical condition.

Police sources believe the three shootings this morning are connected to the pre-dawn festivities leading up to today's West Indian Day parade. The traditional celebration, known as J'ouvert, has been the scene of numerous shootings in the past, although cops have had it under control in recent years.

Calling the chilling violence "just unconscionable," Mayor Bloomberg demanded that the feds step up their efforts to get illegal weapons off the streets.

"We just cannot continue to have these guns in the hands of kids who don't understand the value of human life," he said.

Two dozen of the victims were shot in 13 incidents between 6 a.m. Saturday and 6 a.m. yesterday, authorities said.

More than half of those were wounded -- one fatally -- within a five-hour stretch, from 3 to 8 a.m. yesterday.

The 25th victim was shot at 9 a.m. yesterday.

The one-day crime wave mirrored the city's drug-fueled epidemic of violence in the 1980s and '90s, police sources said.

"Last night was unbelievable," one source said. "I can't remember a couple of hours like these since the days of crack."

The violence continued during the day yesterday, with at least five more shootings through midnight, one of them fatal.

A total of eight people alone were shot at 3:40 a.m. at the out-of-control house party on East 221st Street in The Bronx Sunday, authorities said.

The violence erupted after one man crashed the gig and then got into an argument with another male partygoer, sources said. Each opened fire on the other, spraying the panicked crowd with at least 21 bullets.

"I heard three shots, then a bunch more," said a neighbor who asked that her name be withheld. "Then I heard people going over the fence and women screaming."

Sabine Walters, 48 -- whose daughter threw the "liquor barbecue" bash and whose 11-year-old son, Shaquan, was hit in the right calf by a bullet -- said, "I looked around, screaming, 'Where's my son? Where's my son?' "

Shaquan, his leg wrapped in white gauze, looked terrified as he whimpered to a reporter from his bed at Jacobi Hospital, "My foot hurts."

Police said they were searching for 17-year-old Oneil DaSilva, of Mount Vernon, in connection with the shooting. His rap sheet includes nine arrests for attempted murder, third-degree assault and burglary.

The second suspect has not been identified.

The other two wounded kids were a 13-year-old girl hit in the left thigh and a 14-year-old girl shot in the back. Both were in stable condition last night.

Five men were also shot at the party. A 24-year-old victim, shot twice in the chest, was in critical condition.

The most gravely injured victim in the other shootings was a man shot on East 93rd Street in Brooklyn. He later died.

[The_Ripper]

Was this a parade or a firing range?

Gunfire repeatedly rocked the West Indian Day Parade in Brooklyn yesterday -- even while Mayor Bloomberg marched nearby -- as the city's terrifying epidemic of shootings over the Labor Day weekend grew steadily worse.

The orgy of violence -- including eight fatalities among the 48 gunshot victims -- seemed to follow the revelers everywhere, from the parade route to nearby fast-food joints and even to their own homes.

In all, nine of the shooting victims were hit at or near the parade, the annual Caribbean-themed festival in Crown Heights, where a gunman had fired into the air only blocks from where Bloomberg had just begun marching.


"[The gunman] shouted something, then 'boom!' Everyone ducked," said a witness, Marlene Anthony, adding that the young thug was standing at Rockaway Parkway and Clarkson Avenue - just blocks from the parade staging area. "It was a bad mix of alcohol, ignorance and a fool with a gun who tries to ruin the fun of the parade."

The gunman, Devon Stevens, 25, jumped into a livery cab, but went only a couple blocks before hopping out on East 94th Street at Winthrop Street, where he ditched the gun as cops gave chase, authorities said.

"I was out here sweeping and listening to music when I saw the police grab up this young man on the hood of this car," said an elderly resident on East 94th Street. "There were so many police chasing him."

Cops pepper-sprayed the Stevens.

Hours after the parade ended, an elderly woman was killed in the crossfire of a melee between cops and a gunman.

The parade had gotten off to a rocky start at 6 a.m., when a nearby McDonald's -- packed with 100 early risers prepping for the festivities -- was the site of a senseless shooting.

A customer Kenneth Beggs, 44, bumped into a man entering the Empire Boulevard eatery and apologized.

But Anthony Carruthers, 28, allegedly refused to let the incident go and pumped bullets into Beggs' legs.

"The bullet shattered the door, so everyone ran out the other door," said one McDonald's cook.

Tempers flared after parade ended, as well, with one reveler shot in front of a crowd on Eastern Parkway.

A group of six or seven men had pummeled the victim on the ground and then an attacker pulled out a handgun and shot him in the leg.

Before the gunman fled, he grabbed a pot of steaming rice from a food vendor and tossed it onto an onlooker.

Cops tackled the gunman. His victim is expected to survive.

The shocking 72-hour shooting tally came as police revealed that the number of people who took a bullet in the past week had skyrocketed.

For the week ending Sunday, a whopping 98 people had been shot -- nearly twice the 53 shot during the same week last year, the NYPD said.


Those injured last week were involved in 72 incidents, compared to 40 shoot-ups in the same week in 2010, according to the Police Department.

Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said that although the number of shootings so far this year is fewer when compared to a decade ago, the spree of gunfire over the weekend is "obviously . . . cause for concern.

"We're doing everything we can do," added Kelly, who cited the NYPD's shifting of resources to target guns on the streets, including boosting overtime.

Some of the shootings were clearly "associated with the parade," Kelly said. "Quite frankly, this is something that does happen with this parade."

Bloomberg said, "It was a bad weekend, no question about that . . . There's just too many guns on the streets of this city. It's a national problem . . . because it's so easy to buy guns in other states, and just drive them in and sell them in the back of your car."

In all, at least 16 people were hit by bullets yesterday -- 15 of them in Brooklyn.

The exception, a 33-year-old man, was shot twice in the torso and once in the left arm at 11:48 a.m. in front of the St. Nicholas Houses in Harlem.

Police yesterday also nabbed a suspect in another case, in which eight people were shot in The Bronx.

The man and a rival are suspected of engaging in a shootout that wounded the victims -- including 11-year-old Shaquan Walters -- at a house party early Sunday.

The man, Phillip Muir, 21, of Wilson Avenue in The Bronx, was caught at 2:15 a.m. by the NYPD during a car stop in Mount Vernon, in Westchester, with the assistance of police there.

The other alleged shooter, 17-year-old Oneil DaSilva of Mount Vernon, remains at large.

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NYC swag.

[Darkwing Duck (The Reincarnation)]

"New York City - greatest city in the world"

 

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[DJ SUGAFREE QUIK]

"New York City - greatest city in the world"

 

New Yorkers love to say that but if it is, then why do half the people born there keep moving to California & Florida?  Somebody riddle me that!.  But seriously, I feel for the victims.  Its sickening to hear that tragedy.  Hardly anyone dies of old age anymore.  Its not cool to die young, its also not cool to shoot dead, shoot dead shoot dead. 
   And I thought NY was supposed to be safer than the bay area the last few years.  39 in a weekend.  Oakland & Frisco haven't done weekend numbers like that & shooting deaths are the no.1 thing to do there