New York City's violent weekend ended yesterday with another person killed and a seven-year-old grazed by a bullet. All seven fatalities were the result of shootings.
The little girl was reportedly walking with her father on Cauldwell Avenue, near East 158th Street in Morrisania, around 9 p.m. when gunshots broke out. She was grazed in the ankle and is in stable condition.
Earlier in the day, also in the Bronx, a 24-year-old man, identified as David Hooks, was shot in the torso before 3 p.m. at East 194th Street and Briggs Avenue. He was pronounced dead at St. Barnabas Hospital.
His death was the seventh of the weekend:
On Saturday, around 5:45 p.m. Julio Yasser, 36, was shot in the torso in front of 1925 Church Avenue in Brooklyn. He was pronounced dead at Kings County Hospital.
Also on Saturday, before 8 p.m., two people were shot in front of 724 East Tremont Avenue in the Bronx. A 34-year-old who was shot in the torso survived (and is in critical condition), while Nestor Suazo, 25, also shot in the torso, died from his injuries. His sister spoke to the Daily News and indicated he was killed during an argument, "He went to some type of video shoot ... with a female friend of his and a friend of hers and supposedly a fight broke out. They shot both of them."
Around 11:30 p.m., officers found Kevin Byre, 34, shot in the head at East 115 St. and First Avenue in Manhattan. He was pronounced dead at Metropolitan Hospital.
At 1:45 a.m. on Sunday morning, three men were killed at the Ingersoll Houses in Fort Greene, Brooklyn. Calvin Clinkscales, 43, shot in the head and torso, and Lacount Simmons, 39, shot in the back and torso, were pronounced dead at the scene.
Herbert Brown, 76, a fixture and believed to be a bystander, died at Methodist Hospital from a gunshot wound to the abdomen. His common-law wife told the Post, "I was on the phone with him just before. He told me to stay inside. All I heard was [someone yelling], ‘Yo!’ and then the shooting started." Another resident of the complex said to the Times, "He always tried to keep everybody in line. If he see you going in the wrong direction, he’d try to send you in the right direction."
Governor Andrew Cuomo denounced the gun violence, saying, "The madness has to stop and has to stop in Washington. The guns aren’t coming from the state anymore . . . They are coming from down South, and they’re bringing the guns in." A lawyer in his administration, Carey Gabay, died after being shot in pre-J'ouvert violence in Crown Heights on Labor Day.
Mayor Bill de Blasio said of the violence at the Ingersoll Houses that the shooting "appears to be criminals against criminals... That doesn’t mean we take it less seriously. But we’ve put a lot of money into Ingersoll and other housing projects, and we’re not going to let this situation stop us from continuing to drive down crime."