In New York City, 25 Shot – Three Dead – in One Weekend
Gun violence rocked New York City as 25 people were shot in a 48-hour period in mayhem that touched four of the city’s five boroughs.
Over the last weekend, the shootings resulted in the death of a 21-year-old man in the Bronx, Ivan Martinez, and the wounding of an 11-year-old girl, who was left paralyzed by a shooting.
A second man, a 40-year-old whose name was not disclosed by the police, was shot in East Harlem. Shortly after, in another incident, Damon Powell, 25, was killed outside of the public housing complex where he lived in Brooklyn.
Also in Brooklyn, 11-year-old Tayloni Mazyck was shot by a teenager who opened fire at members of a rival gang, police said. The bullet traveled through her neck and lodged in her spine.
The rash of violence was particularly shocking for a city whose leaders take pride in having one of the lowest rates of shootings and murders for a major American city. Staten Island was the only borough where no shootings took place over the weekend.
What’s more, it comes in the final months of the administration of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, who has placed his efforts — and money — behind a national campaign to strengthen gun control laws.
In fact, the topic of the weekend’s gun violence seeped in the New York mayoral race on Monday, when a group of activists and elected officials held a press conference challenging the mayoral candidates to propose solutions to gun violence.
The event included Tamika D. Mallory, the executive director of the National Action Network, as well as New York City Councilman Jumaane Williams, a Democrat from Brooklyn.
The weekend violence represented about 5 percent of the 440 shootings in New York so far in 2013. That figure is 23 percent lower than the 574 people shot in New York in the same period last year.
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(Photo: Jonathan Fickies/Getty Images)