A 26-year-old man was shot to death in a Bronx park early Thursday, the third homicide in the troubled borough in four days, police said.
The victim was shot in the chest in Starlight Park near West Farms Road and E. 174th St. about 2:50 a.m., cops said. He was attacked on a path that runs parallel to Amtrak tracks along the Bronx River on the eastern side of the park.
Medics rushed the victim to St. Barnabas Hospital, where he died. His name was not immediately released.
No arrests have been made. Cops were scouring the area for surveillance footage that could help them identify the shooter and track their movements.
The killing comes a week after Mayor Adams vowed to send 1,000 more cops to the Bronx to tamp down gun violence in the borough.
Eight people have been fatally shot in the Bronx in two weeks. Thursday’s shooting is the third time in two weeks gunfire erupted either inside or steps from a Bronx park.
On Monday night, five young men, four of them teenagers, allegedly opened fire on a group of men on Allerton Ave. near White Plains Road in Allerton, killing Jamari Henry, 25, and wounding four others.
The five suspects sped off in a Honda only to crash a half mile away at Arnow and Hone Aves. Cops took all five into custody, charging them with murder, manslaughter, attempted murder and other charges.
Their arraignments in Bronx Criminal Court were pending Thursday.
The shooting was part of an ongoing gang beef believed to be linked to control of the illegal marijuana trade in the area, a police source said Wednesday.
About 2 a.m. Tuesday, just hours after the Allerton mass shooting, 21-year-old Jontay Davis was found shot in the head behind St. Barnabas Hospital on Third Ave. near E. 182nd St. in Belmont. Medics rushed him inside, but he could not be saved.
Police believe someone dumped Davis behind the hospital and fled. Davis lived less than a mile from the hospital.
On Wednesday, NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch said the new officers assigned to the Bronx would be placed on footposts “on the streets and at the times” where violence has occurred in the past.
“It’s our expectation that those officers will quell some of the violence that has happened there over the last two weeks,” Tisch said on PIX11 News.
Tisch said most of the gun violence across the city has been linked to gang activity.
“The mayor has wanted us to go after gangs and guns, and we’ve done that in a big, historic way [this year],” said Tisch.
Last Thursday, Adams made the extra deployment announcement at a basketball court at Haffen Park in Baychester, where a gang-related mass shooting at a basketball tournament on Aug. 23 left one man dead and four wounded, including a teen girl still in critical condition with a bullet lodged behind her eye.
One day before the shooting at the tournament, four teens between the ages of 13 and 15 were wounded when gunfire broke out around 4 p.m. on Tratman Ave. near St. Peters Ave., down the block from the Pearly Gates playground in Westchester Square, cops said.
Back-to-back homicides occurred in the Bronx on Aug. 26, including one during a robbery. The next day, in Morrisania, disgruntled tenant Jimmy Avila fatally shot the superintendent of his apartment building during an ongoing dispute over access to the backyard, officials said.
Avila died of an apparent suicide at Rikers Island Saturday, the day after he was arraigned on murder charges, officials said.
The violence continued Friday night when three men were shot outside a church in Fordham. All of their injuries were minor, cops said.
The Bronx has had more shootings so far this year than in 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.
Despite the uptick in violence, Tisch said Bronx shootings in 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 Wednesday. “I don’t want your listeners to think everything is out of control.”
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