Police were called to reports of shots fired in the Brooklyn neighborhood shortly before 8 p.m. (2 a.m. HB) and upon arrival found a car parked on a street with three occupants, said during a brief update urges New York City Police (NYPD) Inspector Michael Kemper.
“In the passenger seat, there was a 12-year-old boy who had been shot multiple times. He died on the spot,” said the policeman, speaking of a “terrible incident”.
He added that a 20-year-old woman, sitting in the driver’s seat, had also been shot several times. She was taken to hospital for surgery and “expected to survive”.
Finally, an eight-year-old girl in the back seat was unharmed.
According to the first elements of the investigation, the victims had parked their car to buy food when “shots were fired which went through the vehicle”, added Mr. Kemper, but without saying if the victims had been targeted or had been hit by stray bullets.
Speaking to the press, New York Mayor Eric Adams, an African-American former police officer, wondered: “What happens to people sitting in their cars and being shot? When are we going to stop to fight for the innocent in this town?”.
The Democratic mayor took office in January on an agenda to tackle crime, recidivism and the illegal spread of guns in New York, a megacity of nearly nine million people whose crime statistics , particularly by firearms, have risen sharply since 2020.
“As long as we have guns in a system that encourages recidivism, we will continue to have crime scenes like this,” Adams said.