NEW YORK — Police are looking for a gunman after a 17-year-old was shot and killed in the Bronx on Sunday night.
The incident happened at around 6:15 p.m. in Mott Haven. The victim was the second teenager shot in the city and at least the ninth person shot over the weekend.
CBS 2’s Tim McNicholas has more on a community that is desperate for change.
Before flashing lights filled the neighborhood and detectives filled the street, Thomas Ford said he was just trying to walk home when he heard two gunshots near Beekman and East 141st Street.
“So I ran back up there to see what happened, being that I had just left from up there. And when I got back up there I seen some kid laying in the middle of the street with a bunch of people crowding around him,” Ford said.
That kid was a 17-year-old who died from a gunshot wound to his chest, one of at least nine people shot in the city over the weekend, including three in one incident in Cypress Hills on Sunday morning. There was also another shooting in Mott Haven, the same neighborhood where the 17-year-old was killed.
“I got kids, myself, so I felt … I didn’t feel too good about it, seeing a young kid stretched out in the middle of the street like that,” Ford said.
While homicides are down citywide compared to last year, they are still up 30 percent compared to pre-pandemic levels.
At the end of September 2019, there were 237 murders. So far this year there have been 309.
“Some people were saying it was fireworks and I knew it wasn’t,” Ford said.
It’s an unsettling reality for Ford and his neighbors.
“I almost wanted to jump for cover, myself, to be honest with you. It was a little nerve racking,” Ford said.
Police are still looking for whoever shot that 17-year-old on Beekman. Detectives said five people in ski masks took off running from the block right after the shooting, heading west toward Oak Terrace.
