Gunfire injures 5 people at NYC event

NEW YORK — Five people, including a 6-year-old boy and his mother, were shot early Monday at an unofficial celebration of J’Ouvert, a daybreak event in Brooklyn that typically marks the start of Carnival in Caribbean cultures but was canceled this year because of the coronavirus.

The gunfire broke out shortly before 3 a.m. at the crowded intersection of Nostrand Avenue and Crown Street in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn, according to police. The boy was shot in his left leg and taken to Kings County Hospital with injuries that were not considered life-threatening, police said. The mother, 47, and three men — all adults — were also shot in either their feet or legs and were hospitalized.

Terence Monahan, chief of detectives of the New York City Police Department, said on Twitter that two men had been arrested in connection with the shootings and that two guns had been recovered. Monahan added that the investigation “is ongoing.”

J’Ouvert is traditionally held in the early morning hours before Brooklyn’s West Indian American Day Parade, a pageant of colorful Caribbean costumes and food that goes up and down Eastern Parkway.

The shootings came amid a citywide spike in gun violence that has been seized upon by President Donald Trump as part of his law-and-disorder reelection campaign.

In August, according to police statistics, shootings in New York more than doubled over the same period last year and killings rose by nearly 50%.