A 1-year-old boy was shot and killed in Brooklyn late Sunday after gunmen fired on a sidewalk cookout. The shooting took place at around 11:35 p.m. near Raymond Bush Playground in Bedford-Stuyvesant. The baby, who was sitting in a stroller when he was shot in the stomach, was pronounced dead at Maimonides Medical Center at 2:30 a.m. Three other people, all adult males, were shot and are expected to survive.
Police believe two men walked up to the group and opened fire, hitting 22-month-old Davell Gardner, Pix 11 reports. The other victims are a 36-year-old man who was shot in the leg, a 35-year-old man who was shot in the groin, and a 27-year-old man who was shot in the ankle.
No arrests have been made in the shooting, which comes after another violent week in New York City. There were 43 shootings in the city last week, the New York Post reports, up from 13 in the same period last year. July Fourth weekend saw 64 people shot and ten of them killed, following the worst June for shootings in New York City since 1996.
Mayor Bill de Blasio addressed the surge in shootings Friday, announcing a program to flood Harlem’s streets with police. The area, he said, is a “hotspot.” The effort paired police officers with violence interrupters from the neighborhood.
“It’s not something that’s acceptable in this city,” he said of the shootings. “We cannot have people live in fear. We cannot have our young people in the crosshairs. It’s not something that we will allow in this city.”
