12 shot, 2 killed as NYC gun violence continues to surge
A dozen people were shot — two fatally — in 11 separate incidents across the city Thursday and Friday, police said.
In the latest gunplay, a 25-year-old man was blasted once in the left arm by a ski mask-wearing thief who displayed a revolver and swiped his gold chain at George Street and Wyckoff Avenue in Ridgewood around 2 a.m. Friday, authorities said.
The victim went home and didn’t receive medical attention until around 11:30 a.m., when he showed up at Wyckoff Heights Medical Center, cops said.
Around 1 a.m., a 30-year-old man and a 23-year-old woman were shot on Chauncey Street near Saratoga Avenue in Stuyvesant Heights, cops said.
The man was shot twice in the torso and the man was also blasted two times, according to police.
Both were taken to Kings County Hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.
The suspect, who cops say was wearing all dark clothing, took off.
On Thursday alone, 10 people were hurt in nine shootings, according to preliminary figures released by the NYPD.
Most recently, a 19-year-old man was shot in the upper left leg at East 119th Street and Lexington Avenue in East Harlem around 11:20 p.m., cops said.
He was taken to Harlem Hospital, where he is expected to survive.
Around a half-hour earlier, Leon Vega, 27, was shot multiple times on East 154th Street near Elton Avenue in the Melrose section of the Bronx.
He was taken to Lincoln Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
Vega was released on parole in early June from an upstate prison where he was doing time on two counts of first-degree robbery, state corrections records show.
The motive for the slaying was unclear Friday morning.
In the Brownsville section of Brooklyn, a 34-year-old man was shot in the left leg at East 94th Street and New York Avenue around 10:10 p.m., authorities said.
He was taken to NYC Health + Hospitals/Kings County with non-life-threatening injuries.
Just before 9 p.m. in the Bronx, a 30-year-old man was shot in the left leg in the lobby of a building on Trinity Avenue near East 163rd Street, part of NYCHA’s Forest Houses, cops said.
He was taken to Lincoln Hospital in stable condition.
Thursday’s first fatal shooting happened when Shyhiem McLean, 22, was gunned down inside his own building on Chauncey Street near Malcolm X Boulevard in Stuyvesant Heights around 4:30 p.m., according to police.
The shooter entered the building and started firing, according to police.
The motive was not immediately clear, and it was also not known if McLean knew the shooter, who remained at large Friday morning.
Shootings were reported earlier in the day in Brooklyn, the Bronx and Queens.
In two separate incidents, police also opened fire at armed suspects in the Bronx. In one of them, at East 156th Street and Hewitt Place, cops fired at a suspect who reportedly shot at them first.
In the other, police fired at a man who pointed his gun toward them behind a building on East 219th Street near Laconia Avenue in Williamsbridge, authorities said.
That suspect, who was not struck, dropped the gun and fled inside a bodega on 216th Street, where cops caught up to him and tased him.
The incidents come as the city continues to grapple with a surge in gun violence.
On Thursday’s date in 2019, which was a Tuesday, only one shooting was reported.