Twenty-four New Yorkers were hit by gunfire, one fatally, over 24 hours of violence this weekend, prompting Mayor Bloomberg to call the bloody stretch "unconscionable" and demand action from Washington.
The eruption of shootings from 6 a.m. Saturday to 6 a.m. Sunday left the mayor livid and the parents of three wounded children distraught and angry.
Police said the two dozen victims were shot in 14 separate incidents in Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx. As of last night, no arrests had been made in any of the shootings.
"These people come with guns and shoot at anyone. They don't care if there are children around," said Charles Walters, 53, whose 11-year-old son, Shaquan, was the youngest of eight people wounded early yesterday at a backyard party in the Bronx by a lone gunman.
Shaquan was shot in the right leg and was recovering yesterday at Jacobi Medical Center. A 14-year-old girl was shot in the back and a 13-year-old girl was wounded in the left thigh in the 3:39 a.m. barrage.
Five young men - ages 17, 18, 19, 21 and 24 - were also wounded in the shooting on E. 221st St. in Williamsbridge and taken to local hospitals, cops said. They were expected to survive.
As police hunted for the suspect, who they identified as 17-year-old Oneil Dasilva of Mount Vernon, Bloomberg went ballistic yesterday, demanding stiffer federal gun laws.
The mayor said 24 people shot in 24 hours in the city "is just unconscionable."
"We cannot tolerate it," Bloomberg said while speaking at the Christian Cultural Center in Brooklyn. "There are just too many guns on the streets and we have to do something about it."
New York has the toughest gun laws in the country, but Bloomberg said the city alone cannot stop the onslaught of shootings. "We need the federal government to step up," he said.
Bloomberg is a co-chair of Mayors Against Illegal Guns and has lobbied Washington repeatedly to beef up gun laws.
The mayor called on all federal politicians, regardless of party, to get on the same page .
"Both ends of Pennsylvania Ave., both sides of the aisle," he said. "We cannot continue to have these guns in the hands of kids who don't understand the value of life."
Overall, gun violence in the city is down 5.9% from last year. As of Aug. 28, 1,123 people had been shot in New York this year, according to the NYPD.
In the 24 hours of bloodshed, only one victim was fatally shot, a 30-year-old man found just after 2 a.m. yesterday with bullet wounds in the head and back in a home on E. 93rd St. in Flatbush.
The cycle of gun violence began about 6 a.m. Saturday when a 35-year-old woman was shot and wounded at Saratoga Ave. and Newport St. in Brooklyn.
During one 18-minute stretch between 2:12 a.m. and 2:30 a.m. yesterday, five men were shot in three separate incidents, including three wounded at a house on Beach Channel Drive in Rockaway Park, Queens.
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