A shooting suddenly occurred in New York City’s Times Square on Saturday evening after several men got into an argument, with three innocent bystanders being shot and sent to the hospital, as reported by Fox News.
Witness testimony indicates that a group of two to four men got into an argument at about 5:00 PM EST, at the intersection of 44th Street and 7th Avenue, with one of them eventually drawing a gun. He fired the gun multiple times, separately hitting three civilians: A 4-year-old girl, a 23-year-old woman, and a 46-year-old woman. The girl was toy shopping with her family at the time, while the 23-year-old was a tourist from Rhode Island, and the 46-year-old was from New Jersey.
NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea revealed several details in a press conference, including the fact that all three victims were completely unrelated to each other. He also confirmed that all three were expected to survive their injuries, with the girl and the 23-year-old both shot in the leg, and the 46-year-old shot in the foot. All three were taken to Bellevue Hospital for treatment. Portions of Times Square were shut down in the aftermath of the shooting, and three shell casings in the .25 caliber were recovered at the scene.
The NYPD eventually released footage from surveillance cameras in the area, which confirmed that the suspect who fled the scene was a black man, wearing a black-and-white sports jersey with red, green, and yellow stripes, with the number 9 on the front. Commissioner Shea said he had “no doubt” that the release of the footage would soon lead to the suspect’s capture.
New York City has been plagued with a rise in violent crime over the course of the last year, with the last week alone seeing a spike of 182 percent in the number of shootings in the city, as well as a 253 percent rise in gun violence. The rise in violence has been attributed to the violent riots perpetrated by far-left domestic terrorist groups such as Black Lives Matter and Antifa, which went largely unpunished by Mayor Bill de Blasio (D-N.Y.), and subsequently saw a rise in violence against police officers as well. The violent trends have led to many police officers leaving the force altogether, and many business owners fleeing the city.
However, addressing the Times Square shooting, de Blasio refused to blame these factors and instead attributed it to a “flood of illegal guns” into New York.