Bullets spray Bx. barbecue
1 dead, 3 wounded, no arrests after chaos in park
A group of gunmen turned a giant barbecue in a Bronx park into a bloodbath, killing one man and injuring three other people, including an 11-year-old boy, as they sprayed bullets indiscriminately, cops said Sunday.
Daniel Espinosa was hanging out with his brother at the Claremont Park cookout when he heard a barrage of shots about 11:15 p.m. Saturday and made a run for it. He found out later that his brother, 22-year-old Joseph Sanchez, couldn’t get away in time and took a bullet to the chest.
Sanchez died at Bronx Care Health System.
“Yesterday when that happened everybody [was] running, and I see everybody running but I don’t see him,” Espinosa told the Daily News. “Everybody was just trying to save their life.”
When he returned to the park, he learned his brother, who worked in construction, had been hospitalized.
“I’m going to miss my brother” Espinosa said. “That was my brother.”
The shots rang out near Teller Ave. and Mount Eden Parkway after an argument at the cookout celebrating Central American Independence Day.
Neighborhood resident Diana Martinez, 29, had only been at the cookout for about an hour when she witnessed a fight between two women.
“I heard, like, five or six shots, and everybody was running,” Martinez said.
“They were screaming and falling over each other, running, scared.
“They were scared. There were a lot of people.”
On Sunday afternoon Martinez was sifting through debris left behind by terrified partygoers, looking for a friend’s phone lost in the chaos. She moved to the neighborhood two months ago and had never been to Claremont Park before Saturday night.
“It was really scary,” she said of the shooting. “People, they just come to have fun. Then they get shot.”
Cops are looking for three men, at least one of whom fired into the crowd, cops said. The men shot indiscriminately into the sea of partygoers and took off, police said.
EMS rushed three of the victims to local hospitals, including Sanchez. Later, a 22-year-old man walked into Lincoln Hospital with a gunshot wound to the leg.
An 11-year-old boy shot in the shoulder was in stable condition at Lincoln Hospital. A 24-year-old woman blasted twice in the torso was in critical condition at the same hospital.
Cops recovered one gun at the scene but have made no arrests. Police say the three suspects fled in a white Nissan.
Espinosa said Sanchez, a native of Honduras, lived in New Orleans and was visiting friends in the Bronx over the weekend.
“He came all the way to here to pass time with the family. That’s why he came,”Espinoza said.
Before the shooting, the victim asked his brother to visit in New Orleans, and talked about returning to Honduras together to spend time with their family.
“He liked soccer. That’s the family game,” he said. “Every time I go to New Orleans to see him we always go to the park to play soccer.”
At a press conference in Claremont Park Sunday, Mayoral GOP candidate Curtis Sliwa slammed the de Blasio administration and the city Parks Department for a lack of lighting and NYPD surveillance cameras in city parks.
“You can tell what a dire circumstance it must have been as people fled for their lives, fled for their lives as they left everything else behind,” Sliwa said.