A 38-year-old man was shot dead in the stairwell of a Bronx NYCHA building — a murder that ended a string of nearly two weeks with no slayings in the city, police said Monday.
Gregory Stewart was shot in the head about 9:05 p.m. Sunday inside a Sotomayor Houses building on Watson Ave. near Rosedale Ave. in Soundview, cops said. Medics rushed the victim to Jacobi Medical Center but he could not be saved.
A man was taken into custody but has not yet been charged.
Stewart lived in the Wakefield section of the Bronx, according to cops.
Stewart’s murder ended a stretch of 12 days, beginning Nov. 25, that saw no new recorded homicides citywide.
The last known murder in the city was the stabbing death of 80-year-old Lev Vayner inside his apartment on Overlook Terrace near W. 184th St. in Washington Heights on Nov. 24.
The suspect, 45-year-old Alon Riabichev, whom Vayner was kindly letting crash with him, called 911 around 3:15 a.m. and confessed to having killed Vayner, according to prosecutors. Riabichev is charged with murder.
The last time the city went this long with no murders during the Compstat era was in 2015, which also saw a 12-day stretch with no homicides.
CompStat was created by late NYPD Deputy Commissioner Jack Maple during Bill Bratton’s first stint as police commissioner in 1994. The data-driven approach has been credited as one of the factors in the sharp decline in the city’s crime rate since then.
