Police said two men were shot and killed early Monday in Bronx neighborhoods where gun violence has been relatively low so far this year.
NYPD officials said a 26-year-old man was shot in the torso just after 3 a.m. in the third-floor hallway of a building at the Longfellow Avenue Rehab NYCHA complex in Longwood.
First responders transported the man to Lincoln Hospital, where he was pronounced dead, according to the department.
Police said they made no immediate arrests and early on Tuesday identified the man as Bronx resident Jaquill Monroe.
An hour later, about two miles away, two men were shot outside a McDonald’s in Melrose, NYPD officials said.
Officers found both men with multiple gunshot wounds and transported them to Lincoln Hospital, where one was pronounced dead and the other was in critical condition.
Police did not immediately have identifying information for either victim and did not make any arrests. NYPD officials were still investigating what led up to both shooting incidents.
On the street outside the McDonald’s at 279 East 149 St. later on Monday morning, detectives were examining a silver Nissan Rogue SUV whose driver’s and passenger’s seat windows were broken. Blood-covered clothes and chargers hung out of its front doors, with the car parked just down the block from Lincoln Hospital.
Neighbors at a building next to the scene said they were woken up by the sound of multiple shots.
“It was still dark out, I was still sleeping, and then I just heard, like, eight shots,” said Reya Flowers, 25, who has lived in the building since December. “I was like, ‘oh well, it’s the Bronx, that’s not surprising.’ And then I just laid back down, and I was like, ‘I hope whoever that was is alright.’”
“I’m learning now that no one is,” she added.
Around noon, at the scene of the Longwood shooting, a few NYPD detectives were coming in and out of the building at 1102 Longfellow Ave. Police tape covered the hallway on the third floor, where medical debris was strewn about.
Several neighbors said they did not know what had happened. When informed by a reporter, they said they did not think the man who was killed lived in the building.
Minerva Melendez, who lives in an apartment directly adjacent to the crime scene and was woken up by her dogs barking, said she opened her front door and saw emergency medical workers giving the victim CPR on the floor.
“He seemed gone,” she said. “It was my first time ever seeing him.”
Melendez added that she was upset by the incident in part because her young children had to cross the hallway on their way to school on Monday morning. “There’s always people sitting in the lobby,” she said. “Sometimes it’s people [who] we don’t even know [if] they live in the building.”
Department data shows the 26-year-old was the first person to be shot and killed so far this year in the 41st precinct, which encompasses Longwood and Hunts Point.
The 40th precinct, which includes the South Bronx neighborhoods of Port Morris, Mott Haven and Melrose, had only recorded one other lethal shooting in 2024. Laquai Dash, 17, was fatally shot while leaving his high school in Melrose in March, police said.
Of the five boroughs, Brooklyn has experienced the highest number of deadly shootings so far this year, with 19 incidents reported, compared to 11 in the Bronx, according to NYPD data compiled by Gothamist. Both boroughs had roughly 60 fatal shootings each last year.
This story has been updated with additional information.