Tourist loved N.Y., hit by bullet & now ‘ready to go home’
A tourist from Kansas was hit by a stray bullet as he was walking near Times Square early Wednesday, officials said.
Chris Ruby, 44, was near Eighth Ave. and W. 38th St. in Manhattan when a gunman opened fire at a rival on the corner about 2:15 a.m., cops said.
“I was having such a great time until this happened,” Ruby told ABC7. “All those New York souvenirs I have, [now] I don’t want to look at them.”
Cops arrested a suspect later in the day.
Ruby had been at the Mets’ 8-4 victory over the Philadelphia Phillies in Philadelphia on Tuesday night, and took an Amtrak train to Penn Station. He was heading back to his hotel when a shot rang out, cops said.
“He came inside to my store,” a smoke shop worker who declined to give his name told the Daily News. “He didn’t really say much. He just said he got shot and to call the ambulance.”
The worker didn’t believe Ruby until the victim took off his jacket revealing a blood-soaked shirt.
“Once he took the jacket off, that’s when I called the ambulance,” the worker said. “I feel bad for [him] because he was walking like a regular person, was not expecting that was gonna happen.”
Medics rushed Ruby to Bellevue Hospital, cops said. The bullet fractured his collarbone, but he was able to be released so he could fly home to Kansas City.
“It was really bad,” Ruby, who was planning to see a baseball game in every stadium in the country before the shooting, told ABC7. “I’m just ready to go home. I was in the hospital for five hours and then the police station for two or three.”
Nobody else was struck, cops said.
Later Wednesday, cops nabbed 21-year-old Brannovan Martinez. He was charged with assault, criminal use of a firearm and reckless endangerment for allegedly firing the shots.
Martinez, a Bronx resident with seven prior arrests, was busted in November 2019 for his alleged role in a knife melee outside Schnipper’s — a restaurant on the first floor of The New York Times building at the corner of W. 41st St. and Eighth Ave.
Martinez was accused of directing two other men to attack Malcolm Kirk, 27, with a knife and tire iron. He and the other suspects argued that Kirk was the aggressor and that they were acting in self-defense.
The final outcome of the case wasn’t immediately known Wednesday.
Mayor de Blasio declared Wednesday that shootings like the Midtown case “won’t be tolerated.”
“We’ve seen a serious uptick in gun violence that has to be addressed,” de Blasio said at a morning news conference. “It is being addressed by more gun arrests, by deeper work with communities, more use of and more support for the ‘Cure Violence’ movement and the crisis management system.”
“I think people see these actions and they know that continued help is coming,” the mayor added. “New Yorkers don’t live in fear, they keep moving forward. I really believe that.”
As of Monday night, the city has seen a 24% jump in homicides, from 74 this time last year to 92, officials said. Cops have also seen a 59% jump in shootings, from 172 to 274, officials said.