Cops have arrested an 18-year-old youth accused of killing a man pushing a walker and wounding a woman, both with stray bullets, four months ago as he opened fire at a group on a Bronx street, officials said Thursday.
NYPD detectives grabbed Brandon Sullivan on Wednesday afternoon after he was identified as the person responsible for the May 18 shooting on E. 188th St. in Fordham that took the life of 57-year-old Kevin Jennings.
Sullivan was wearing a hooded camouflage-colored sweatshirt around 6:45 p.m. that evening when he opened fire on a group of about 10 men near Marion Ave., cops said.
He didn’t hit anyone he was aiming at, but shot Jennings, an innocent bystander, in the head with a stray shot. A 34-year-old woman standing nearby, who police described as another innocent bystander, was also blasted in the leg.
Jennings was pushing a walker down the street when he was shot, police said.
EMS rushed both victims to St. Barnabas Hospital, where Jennings died.
“I can’t get no sleep,” Jenning’s 46-year-old niece, who wished not to be named, said at the time of her uncle’s death. “Everything is just bottled up. Our family is devastated.”
Relatives were unsure where Jennings, who worked odd jobs, was heading when he was shot.
Cops released surveillance footage of the shooter shortly after the killing, asking anyone with information on the gunman to come forward. It wasn’t immediately disclosed how cops linked the shooting to Sullivan.
Detectives charged Sullivan with murder, manslaughter, assault and criminal possession of a weapon. His arraignment in Bronx Criminal Court was pending Thursday.
The May 18 fatal shooting was the second shooting in the Bronx within a week that involved an innocent bystander.
On May 12, Evette Jeffrey, 16, was struck in the head and killed when a teen gunman opened fire at a rival gang member, police said.
The 14-year-old gunman was arrested the following day, and the 13-year-old who allegedly handed him the gun was arrested a few days later, police said.
Months after those stray-bullet shootings, the Bronx remains a hotbed of gun violence, mostly because of clashes between rival gangs.
Mayor Adams last month vowed to send more than 1,000 cops to the Bronx to tamp down a surge of violent crime in the borough.
The Bronx has had more shootings so far this year than Manhattan, Queens and Staten Island combined. The Bronx also leads the city with 69 murders this year, accounting for a third of the 206 murders that have happened across the five boroughs through the end of August.
Despite the uptick in violence, Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said Bronx shootings this August were down 20% compared with last August.
“We’ve had a few problematic incidents in the last two weeks, but our shootings are still down,” Tisch told 1010 WINS earlier this month. “I don’t want your listeners to think everything is out of control.”
