A 20-year-old man was shot and killed in broad daylight near Manhattan’s Park Avenue on Monday, at the end of a week that saw 50 people shot across the city – a 257 per cent spike from the same time last year, when the pandemic forced New Yorkers into their homes.
From 12am on Friday until midnight on Sunday, 31 people were wounded in 28 shootings, and six killed.
New York’s police union, the Sergeant’s Benevolent Association, blamed the surge in violence on the city’s politicians – in particular Bill de Blasio, the mayor, who is despised by the union for what they see as his anti-police stance.
‘Welcome to the city of violence,’ the SBA tweeted.
A New York police officer inspects the car where a 20-year-old man was killed on East 95th St
Park Avenue is visible at the top of the hill. The leafy neighborhood is full of multimillion homes
A police officer stands guard in the Upper East Side on Monday afternoon after the shooting
The dented front of the Upper East Side victim’s car. It’s unclear if the damage is connected
The neighborhood has been home to famous faces such as Bette Midler and Tamara Mellon
De Blasio oversaw in June a $1 billion reduction in New York Police Department’s $6 billion budget, at the height of the ‘defund the police’ protests.
The deal involved moving school safety agents, who are unarmed but wear police uniforms, into the Department of Education; canceling a July class of roughly 1,100 police recruits; and shifting certain homeless outreach operations away from police control.
Critics say it has made the city less safe.
The wealthy Manhattan enclave was taped off on Monday afternoon following the shooting
So far this year 416 people have been shot citywide, compared to 242 by the same time last year – a 72 per cent increase, according to Fox News.
Murders are up by nine per cent, with 120 recorded through April 25, compared to 110 over the same timeframe last year.
The Upper East Side shooting happened at 2:10pm on Monday afternoon, on East 95th and Lexington Avenue – an area that Bette Midler, Jimmy Choo founder Tamara Mellon and artist Mark Rothko all called home.
The unnamed victim was shot in his parked car.
He was taken to Mount Sinai Morningside, but could not be saved.
The weekend began with another shooting, of a 35-year-old who stopped to ask if a man was OK, before being shot and killed.
Jason Rivera was shot and killed in the Parkchester area of the Bronx at 11:42pm on Friday
Jason Rivera, a father of three whose wife is expecting twins, was murdered in the Parkchester area of the Bronx at 11:42pm on Friday.
His last words, caught on security camera, were him bending over a man slumped on a bench.
‘You good?’ he asked the man, described by the New York Daily News as a 43-year-old disturbed man, who had been seen behaving erratically in a nearby park. ‘You OK?’
The cameras caught sight of a man walking past them, having arrived in a Mercedes SUV.
He then doubled back, and shot and killed Rivera.
Rivera, who had recently relocated from the street where he was killed in the Bronx to Staten Island, was described by his wife as having ‘a good heart’.
Shantay White, 30, told the Daily News that his death while helping someone else did not surprise her.
‘He’s always been like that,’ said White. ‘People know him over there for that. People just know him, period, for that.’
Rivera and White are parents to a seven-year-old girl, three-year-old girl and two-year-old boy.
White, who met Rivera on the block where they lived until two years ago, and where he was killed, said he had issues with some people in the neighborhood.
But, she added, she did not believe it was anything serious.
‘It wasn’t to where it had to be something like this,’ she said.
‘His beef was minor beef, like guy beef stuff, you know. It wasn’t something for somebody to have that much hatred, to take their time to sit and actually wait for him.’
She said she was shocked at the crime.
‘There were kids in the park.
‘The block that it happened on seemed kind of busy at the time. It seemed like people were outside.
‘And for the person to just walk away and go back the same way.’
