36 hours of violence leaves four dead, 36 shot in New York City

NYC violence continues to surge in a weekend that saw multiple people fatally shot and beaten in various parts of the city

Matthew Allen

Aug 16, 2020

The city of New York was hit by a tsunami of violence over the weekend. Several incidents of shootings and beatings across the boroughs over the course of 36 hours resulted in the death of four people and 36 others were injured.

The New York Daily News reports that starting from just after midnight on Friday, Aug. 14 through to the afternoon of Saturday, Aug. 15, there were 23 shootings across the boroughs.

The mayhem started at 12:01 a.m. Friday when a shooting happened behind a home in Queens’ Laurelton neighborhood. Three people were hospitalized with gunshot wounds.

By 5 a.m., two separate shootings in the Bronx and Queens’ Rockaways section sent two more people to the hospital, respectively.

By the afternoon, a Brooklyn man was fatally shot. DeShawn Reid, 28, was shot dead at 4 p.m. on Friday in front of his apartment in Brooklyn’s Flatbush area.

Dashawn Reid, John Jeff and Deshawn Bush all killed in a violent weekend in New York City (New York Daily News, acquired from social media)

By early Saturday morning, a 30-year-old man died in Harlem Hospital from gunshot wounds he received on W.128th St. This was swiftly followed by the death of an off-duty corrections officer in South Jamaica, Queens.

John Jeff was shot 11 times at 3:05 a.m. near a party after an argument took place while he was looking for a parking spot.

Hours after Jeff was killed, and just two miles away from where Reid was murdered, another Brooklyn resident, Jamel Copeland, was found dead in East Flatbush. Copeland, 30, is believed to have been killed during a domestic dispute.

The final incident came Saturday afternoon when a 40-year-old man was shot in the arm while fleeing a gunman on the 4 train platform at midtown Manhattan’s Grand Central Station.

Peace March Held In Brooklyn To Memorialize 1-Year-Old Davell Gardner Killed During Cookout — Police stand at the scene of a shooting which happened as Save Our Streets (S.O.S.) was holding a peace march in response to a surge in shootings in the Bedford Stuyvesant neighborhood in Brooklyn on July 16, 2020, in New York City. The march and shooting were held near the scene in Brooklyn where a one-year-old child, Davell Gardner Jr., was recently shot and killed. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

In addition to the shootings, a Brooklyn native, Deshawn Bush, was beaten to death in Manhattan’s West Village after a confrontation with an unknown assailant early Friday morning. He was killed after leaving a bagel shop on Christopher Street with friends, and the suspect is still at large.

Violence in New York has seen an increase in 2020. There were 253 homicides being investigated by police prior to Friday’s first incident in Laurelton. As of August 9, there was a 79% increase in shootings, from 466 to 833.

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