New York Daily News: MANHATTAN, NY – New York’s savage summer of violence raged on this weekend with nearly two dozen shootings — four of them fatal — and a deadly beating during a 36-hour citywide tsunami of terror.
Police recorded 23 shooting incidents involving 36 victims between 12:01 a.m. Friday and mid-day Saturday, with an off-duty Department of Corrections officer fatally blasted with 11 bullets over a Queens parking spot and three other victims killed by the gunfire echoing across the city’s boroughs.
The ongoing indifference to human life included the savage beating death of Deshawn Bush, 36, of Brooklyn, during an early morning fight with another man in the West Village.
“I’m still shocked,” said the victim’s brother Shamel Bush to the Daily News on Saturday. “I’m still going in and out of crying. I can’t believe it, it’s just disbelief.”
Bush, who just landed a job at Amazon, was with a young woman and a friend when he got into an argument with the unidentified attacker outside a bagel shop on Christopher St. near Bleecker St. at 4:20 a.m., his brother and police said. The assailant ran off and remained on the loose.
“He was himself, you know?” Shamel Bush said about his sibling. “He was brave, he was never afraid to be who he was.”
“We wasn’t on speaking terms that’s why I’m taking it so hard,” Bush said. “We had our issues but we was family at the end of the day. I didn’t wish this on him. I wish we wasn’t going through this.”
The fresh surge in violence began shortly after midnight Friday when three people were shot in the rear of a home in Laurelton, Queens, with all hospitalized. Within the next five hours, two more victims were wounded in shootings in the Rockaways and the Bronx, cops said.
The death toll began to mount at 4 p.m. Friday, when Deshawn Reid, 28, was gunned down outside his Ocean Ave. apartment building in Flatbush, cops said.
“There’s a group chat for the building and some people posted someone was shot outside,” said Reid’s neighbor Jay Isaacs. “We heard it might be someone from the building. Then we heard someone from his family knocking on the door saying ‘I think Shawn got hurt!’ and we were on the couch just like, ‘Shawn?‘”
Reid’s horrified mother, Hermena Moffatt, told The News that someone had called the construction worker Friday afternoon, encouraging him to step outside. A few moments later, he was shot in the street. Witnesses said a silver Nissan Pathfinder SUV laid in wait for him for about 20 minutes before the vehicle rolled up to him and someone inside opened fire.
“All I know is that they called him out the house, somebody called his phone and he went downstairs,” said Reid’s mom, fighting back tears. “When he was there, a vehicle pulled up and fired one shot in his chest and killed him.”
Moffatt said she had no idea why someone would kill her son, insisting he spent most of his time helping his family and taking care of his visually impaired sister.
“My son loved me to death!” she said as she gave sway to her grief. “He would have gave his life for me. (He) ran all my errands. Loved to give me hugs.”
“He loved to prank me, like run jokes and make me laugh. He was a kind and loving person,” she recounted.
“He didn’t like to be standing outside at the corner, and they killed my son on a corner when he was born and raised all his life at this apartment,” she said.
Just before 1 a.m. Saturday, a 30-year-old man was found fatally shot on W. 128th St. in Harlem, cops said. He was rushed to Harlem Hospital, but he could not be saved.
About two hours later, at 3:05 a.m., off-duty city Correction Officer John Jeff was shot to death during an argument as he searched for a parking spot near a late-night party in South Jamaica, Queens. Jeff was shot 11 times, officials said, and the man who killed him may have swiped the guard’s firearm.
The violence continued hours later, when 30-year-old Jamel Copeland was found shot to death near the corner of E. 39th St. and Ave. D in East Flatbush, just two miles from where Reid was killed. Police were looking for the killer. Copeland, they believe, died in a domestic dispute.
Witnesses told police that the victim was being pursued by the gunman before he was shot. The shooter ran out of the train station and remains at large.
Shootings in the city skyrocketed at the beginning of the summer, culminating in a bloody 4th of July weekend, where 41 people were shot, nine fatally, in one day. Police say most of the rampant violence is being sparked by street crews and gangs.
As of Aug. 9, the most recent year-end shooting stats available, the NYPD is fighting a nearly 79% jump in shootings across the five boroughs, from 466 to 833.
The number of homicides in the city are also on the rise, officials said. As of 12:01 a.m. Friday, cops were investigating 253 killings across the five boroughs, a nearly 30% jump from the 195 reported this time last year, officials said.
- Top Feature Photo: Jamel Copeland was pronounced dead at Kings County Hospital after he was shot in the torso at Avenue D and East 39th Street in Brooklyn on Saturday – Theodore Parisienne/for New York Daily News
