A 15-year-old boy was killed and a 14-year-old boy was wounded in a shooting in a Bronx apartment building on Saturday evening, police officials said.
The teenager who died was shot in the chest, the police said. The other boy was shot in the left arm.
Investigators are looking for six people involved in the shooting, the police said. As of Sunday afternoon, no arrests had been made.
The killing came amid an increase in the number of shootings of young people in New York City, even as shootings overall have dropped this year. There were 92 children shot from Jan. 1 through Sept. 28, compared with 76 during the same period in 2024.
In the police’s 49th Precinct, where the shooting occurred on Saturday, the total number of people shot fell from 17 from Jan. 1 through Dec. 21 last year to 12 in the same period this year, according to police data.
The violence on Saturday took place at a New York City Housing Authority development, Eastchester Gardens, on Adee Avenue near Pearsall Avenue in the Bronx’s Allerton neighborhood, the police said.
Officers responded to a 911 call around 6:30 p.m. regarding gunshots. They discovered the 15-year-old boy, Eric Aitken, of Waterbury, Conn., in a building stairwell between the sixth and seventh floors, the police said. Emergency service workers took the boy to Jacobi Hospital, where he died.
Soon after, officers found the 14-year-old boy about six blocks away on Laconia Avenue near Arnow Avenue, the police said. He had fled after he had been shot. The officers took the boy to Jacobi Hospital, where he was in stable condition.
Leon Stafford, 23, a security guard who lives on the seventh floor of the building, close to the stairwell, said he was in his apartment preparing for a physical therapy exam when the gunshots rang out.
“I was studying, and then all of a sudden I hear three loud bangs,” Mr. Stafford said.
He ran to his front door and slowly opened it. But Mr. Stafford said that a person standing on the other side tried to push it shut.
“Don’t open the door,” Mr. Stafford recalled the person shouting.
Mr. Stafford forced it back open and saw the person who had been shouting. Mr. Stafford said the person was wearing a black mask, a black tracksuit and a backpack. He said the person in black and three others then opened the door to the stairwell and sprinted down the staircase.
Mr. Stafford then went back inside his apartment, locked the door and told his mother to hide in her bedroom. “Run in the room, run in the room, Mom!” he said.
“All we have seen in this building is constant violence,” he added.
Chelsia Rose Marcius is a criminal justice reporter for The Times, covering the New York Police Department.
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