The New York Police Department is looking for two men who fired into a crowd on Saturday, shooting 10 people, near 99th Street and 37th Avenue in Queens.
“WANTED for ASSAULT: On 7/31/21 at approx. 10:41 PM, in front of 97-07 37 Ave in Queens, two males displayed firearms and shot into a crowd striking 10 people, then 2 additional suspects picked them up on scooters and fled,” department officials tweeted Sunday.
In the video, the men approached the crowd firing numerous shots before they both jumped onto scooters driven by two others and fled the scene.
“This is a coordinated, brazen attack, for a lack of a better word,” NYPD Chief of Detectives James Essig said.
According to an NBC News report, three of the victims were members of the Trinitarios gang; all are believed to have been the intended targets of the shooting. Seven other injured people were bystanders.
The victims range from the ages of 19 to 72. They were each treated at area hospitals, and none of their injuries are considered life-threatening.
Saturday’s incident in Queens is considered a mass shooting, which is described as any singular shooting event where more than four people are injured.
According to a report from The New York Times, the shooting drew both Democratic and Republican mayoral candidates to the scene to decry gun violence and implore NYPD to advance its efforts to thwart gang violence.
“We are losing the grip on public safety, and we have to respond immediately and treat this like the crisis that it is,” said Eric Adams, the Democratic nominee. He is leading the field and is projected to become the city’s second Black mayor.
Adams called on the NYPD to target gun violence and repeated his support for resurrecting a plainclothes police unit to hunt illegal guns, according to the report.
The former NYPD captain and New York City Transit cop’s stance on policing has been widely criticized by his detractors but is also resonating with voters.
“We have to go after the crews. It’s a small number of shooters and gangs that we are allowing … to continue,” Adams said. “We need to have precision policing in neighborhoods like this to go after those known shooters.”
“Right here in this community, you had a well-organized, total disregard for human life,” Adams said at a press conference near the scene of the shooting, according to The New York Daily News.
“The people who were shot here were not members of gangs, for the most part. They were ordinary New Yorkers,” he continued. “That is a mass shooting.”
“If you allow gangs to get a foothold in this city, we have a real problem. This is a crisis,” Adams said on Sunday. “I’m also calling for Congress to fully fund community violence intervention at the federal level with President Biden’s gun violence initiative and agenda.”
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