A 15-year-old boy was shot multiple times outside an apartment building in East Harlem late on the Fourth of July and is expected to survive, the New York Police Department said, as the city absorbed a burst of gun violence over the holiday weekend. Officers were still searching for the gunman on Sunday, and no one had been taken into custody.
The shooting unfolded just before midnight in front of a residential building on Madison Avenue near 108th Street, in the heart of East Harlem. Police who responded to the scene found the teenager suffering from several gunshot wounds, and he was rushed to a nearby hospital for emergency treatment as officers cordoned off the block.
Investigators said the boy, whose name has not been released because he is a minor, was in stable condition and is expected to recover. Authorities have not detailed a possible motive, and it remained unclear late Sunday morning whether the teenager was the intended target or an unintended victim of the gunfire.
No arrests had been made in the hours after the shooting, and police described the gunman as having fled the area. Detectives were canvassing the neighborhood for witnesses and reviewing available footage, including video captured on the Citizen safety app from the scene, as they worked to piece together what led to the attack.
The East Harlem shooting was one of several across New York City during the Fourth of July weekend. Hours earlier, a masked gunman opened fire on a family barbecue in Coney Island, wounding eight people, four of them children, in one of the most alarming episodes of a violent holiday stretch that has unsettled residents and officials alike.
The bloodshed came despite a heightened police presence deployed across the five boroughs for the holiday, with additional officers assigned to neighborhoods flagged as trouble spots. Separately, an NYPD detective was shot and wounded during a confrontation in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn early Sunday, though he was saved by his ballistic vest and is expected to be fine.
Police urged anyone with information about the East Harlem shooting to come forward and contact investigators. The cluster of gunfire over the long weekend has renewed concern among community leaders about young people being drawn into violence during one of the busiest and most heavily policed holidays of the summer.