NEW YORK (AP) — A gunman on a scooter killed an 87-year-old man and injured three others in a series of random shootings that spanned two New York City boroughs, police said Saturday.
A 25-year-old man was taken into custody without incident and his identity has not been released by police, Deputy Chief of Police Joseph Kenny told a news conference. A 9mm handgun with an extended magazine and a scooter were recovered.
The New York Police Department extracted an image of the shooter from the video and sent it to the phones of officers, some of whom spotted the suspect about two hours after the initial shot.
“We don’t know the motive. It seems his actions were random,” Kenny said.
In total, the NYPD said there were five shootings during the party by someone on a scooter, one in Brooklyn and four in Queens. No one was injured in any of the shootings.
The shooting began around 11:10 a.m. when someone on a scooter shot a 21-year-old man in the shoulder in Brooklyn. He was taken to hospital and is expected to survive, police said.
Seventeen minutes later, an 87-year-old man was shot multiple times in the Richmond Hill neighborhood of Queens. He later died in a hospital.
Shortly after, in Queens, witnesses reported that a man on a scooter was shooting randomly at a group of people, although no one was injured.
Eight minutes later, a 44-year-old man was shot in the head. He was in critical condition at Jamaica Hospital Medical Center.
About a minute later, a 63-year-old man was shot in the chest. He was in stable condition in a hospital.
Murders in the nation’s most populous city have risen in recent years to about their level a decade ago – well below the peak of the early 1990s. The number of people with gunshot wounds has risen in New York during the pandemic and remains stubbornly high, and the city has also faced a string of high-profile crimes.
Mayor Eric Adams, a former New York City police captain, stressed the importance of getting guns off the streets.
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This story has been updated to correct several details about the shooting victims due to incorrect information from NYPD. The deceased man was 87, not 86. The penultimate victim was 44, not 63; he was wounded in the face, not in the shoulder; and he was in critical condition, not stable. The last victim was 63, not 61; and he was in stable, not critical condition.