A gunmen opened fire into a crowd of people at a gathering outside a Bedford-Stuyvesant housing complex on August 16, hitting eight people with bullets in a brazen mass shooting that shocked the local community.
NYPD officials say the gunfire erupted at around 12:24 outside the Roosevelt Houses New York City Housing Authority development on Dekalb Avenue.
According to Deputy Chief John Chell, the commanding officer of the Brooklyn North Detective Bureau, as many as 150 people were gathered outside the Roosevelt Houses listening to music when the bullets started flying.
“The two shooters come off of Pulaski Street and fire into this crowd,” Chell said. Police say it’s unclear who the gunmen were aiming for.
Two stray bullets also smashed through the windows of nearby apartments, but none of the occupants inside were injured, according to Chell.
When the smoke cleared, eight people gathered at the location had been wounded — three men and five women, all of them between 18 and 27 years of age. None of them suffered life-threatening wounds; Chell indicated many of them were wounded in the legs, arms or hips.
EMS units rushed the victims to nearby hospitals for treatment of their injuries.
Detectives are continuing to canvass the crime scene for ballistic and other evidence related to the shooting. Chell said police have obtained numerous pieces of video evidence at or near the crime scene which detectives will examine in the hope of spotting the shooters involved.
Police appealed to the public to come forward with any information they may have about the shooting.
“We’re asking for any help we can get,” Chell said. “There was about 100 to 150 people out here. People saw what happened.”
The 79th precinct, which encompasses Bedford Stuyvesant, is one of the more gun-violence affected precincts in New York, with 30 shooting incidents so far this year, according to NYPD data. Violent crime citywide, however, remains at a low level despite a spike during the pandemic. Both June and July saw violent crime finally start to trend downward citywide, reversing a pandemic trend.
