On a holiday that is usually celebrated with barbecuing, leisure time and family gatherings, the Fourth of July in New York City included over a dozen shootings, with two deaths and severe injuries as a result.
Between 5 p.m. and midnight, gunshots were heard in several neighborhoods across New York City, from Brooklyn to Manhattan and the Bronx.
According to Detective Cheryl Crispin of the NYPD, there were a total of 14 shooting incidents and two deaths. Last year, there were seven shootings and two homicides on the same date. In just one year, the violence on this patriotic holiday doubled.
The two locations where people were pronounced dead were in Harlem and Brooklyn. In Harlem, there were a few shootings, with one person left dead as a result.
In East Harlem just before midnight, a 24-year-old man was hit in the leg by a slug, police said.
The man who was shot and killed, also in East Harlem, was Matt Shaw, a 21-year-old graduate of LeMoyne College. Just before midnight, the police received a call from where the shooting took place, 122 E. 128th St. Shaw was taken to Harlem Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
In Brooklyn, a 33-year-old man was shot in the head inside his home on East 48th Street in the Flatlands neighborhood. He died on the scene. In Bedford-Stuyvesant, four people–two men and two women–were injured in a shooting late Wednesday night.
In the Bronx, two men suffered severe gun wounds in separate locations around 11:30 p.m. Wednesday night. Luckily for Officer Brian Groves, he survived a gunshot on the Lower East Side as a result of his bullet-resistant vest.
Independence Day is a time to be joyful and proud. Unfortunately, in 2012, the Fourth of July literally ended with a bang.