A 34-year-old man was killed and 5 different folks, together with two youngsters, have been wounded on Monday in a taking pictures on the Mount Eden Avenue subway station within the Bronx through the night rush hour, the police mentioned.
The wounded folks, who ranged in age from 14 to 71, have been in steady situation and have been anticipated to get better, the police mentioned.
Police officers mentioned the taking pictures erupted amid a dispute between two teams of youngsters who have been on a northbound No. 4 practice at about 4:30 p.m.
When the practice arrived on the Mount Eden station and other people started to get off, somebody concerned within the dispute fired a shot, Michael M. Kemper, the Police Division’s chief of transit, mentioned at a information convention. The gunfire continued as riders spilled onto the platform and ran for canopy, Chief Kemper mentioned.
Officers responding to a number of 911 calls about gunfire on the station discovered the six victims on the northbound platform, the chief mentioned. Along with the person who was killed, those that have been shot included a 14-year-old woman, a 15-year-old boy, a 29-year-old lady, a 28-year-old man and a 71-year-old man.
Yanesa Ortega, an M.T.A. bus driver who has lived within the space for 5 years, mentioned she was strolling dwelling close to the station when the taking pictures occurred.
“We heard a number of photographs when the practice stopped,” Ms. Ortega, 29, mentioned in Spanish. She added, “The bullets fell below the station.”
She described seeing a younger lady sitting on the station steps, blood coming from the world of her jaw.
“We noticed everyone screaming and working down the steps,” Ms. Ortega mentioned.
Heriberto Paredes was at work on the Grasp Mufflers store on Jerome Avenue when he heard gunfire, he mentioned.
“What I heard appeared like a battlefield,” Mr. Paredes, 52, mentioned, additionally talking in Spanish.
He mentioned that he and a younger man had offered first support to the younger lady Ms. Ortega described. “Her complete coat was lined in blood,” he mentioned.
“I might see the despair on folks’s faces,” Mr. Paredes added, “questioning how one thing like this might occur in a metropolis that’s supposedly secure.”
Police officers mentioned that they have been searching for at the very least one particular person in reference to the shootings and that that they had downloaded safety footage from cameras on the station as a part of the investigation.
After spiking through the Covid-19 pandemic, the variety of shootings in New York Metropolis has continued to fall, in line with Police Division information. There have been 974 shootings within the metropolis final yr, a 25 % decline from 2022, the information reveals.
Main felonies on New York’s transit system account for a tiny fraction of town’s general crime price, and the possibilities of falling sufferer to crime within the subway are statistically low. An evaluation by The New York Occasions in October estimated the speed of violent crimes within the system to be about 1.8 per a million rides.
Gunfire on town’s subway and buses is particularly uncommon. The Police Division’s Transit Bureau reported six shootings within the subway final yr, in contrast with 9 in 2022.
However a number of of the shootings in 2022 — together with the killing of a 48-year-old man by a stranger on a Sunday morning Q practice and a mass taking pictures on a rush-hour N — and different violent crimes have helped gas some New Yorkers’ issues about whether or not the subway is secure, complicating transit officers’ efforts to convey ridership again to prepandemic ranges.
Shootings within the subway final yr included one involving a 34-year-old man who was shot early on a Saturday in January on a transferring practice in Decrease Manhattan and one other wherein a Queens man was charged with felony possession of a weapon after, the police mentioned, he fired two photographs at a homeless man who was making an attempt to rob a lady at a Manhattan station.
Final month, a 45-year-old father and grandfather who labored as a crossing guard was fatally shot aboard a No. 3 practice in Brooklyn after intervening in a dispute between two different passengers over loud music within the automotive, the police mentioned.
Talking on the information convention on Monday, Janno Lieber, the chief govt of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which operates the subway, credited Gov. Kathy Hochul and Mayor Eric Adams for “doing every thing doable to get weapons off the streets.”
Nonetheless, Mr. Lieber mentioned, “New York’s coronary heart breaks when people who find themselves headed dwelling and youngsters are coming dwelling from college to do their homework and so they’re subjected to random acts of violence like what occurred right here late this afternoon.”
