A 79-year-old woman was wounded when she was caught in the middle of a daytime shooting in the Bronx, an attack that also left a 26-year-old man injured. The gunfire erupted in the University Heights neighborhood, near a school, prompting police to cordon off two separate areas of West 183rd Street as they investigated.
According to police, the woman was shot in the stomach as she was walking along West 183rd Street near University Avenue in the afternoon. Officers were seen helping her as she lay on the ground, and an eyewitness described her as an innocent bystander who simply happened to be in the wrong place when the shooting started.
An eyewitness said that moments before the woman was hit, the 26-year-old man had been sitting outside a building at 103 West 183rd Street. In the initial account, two men were said to have approached him and shot him in the leg, an attack the witness described as unfolding far too fast for anyone nearby to react.
Both the woman and the man were rushed to a hospital, where they were listed in stable condition. The fact that the gunfire broke out in the middle of the day, on a residential street near a school, added to the alarm among people who live and work in the area.
In a significant turn in the case, police now believe the 26-year-old man was the one whose gunfire struck the elderly woman. According to authorities, he was in a gun battle with another man at the time of the shooting. That second man got away and was being sought by investigators.
As a result, the 26-year-old man, who had himself been wounded in the gunfire, has now been charged with attempted murder. He is presumed innocent unless and until the case is proven in court. The shift reframes a case that at first appeared to leave him among the victims.
Witnesses had described a heartbreaking scene in University Heights, with one bystander expressing dismay at the sight of the wounded woman on the ground. Police are continuing to investigate the shooting and to search for the other man involved. The case was being treated as active as authorities worked to confirm the full sequence of events.