B’klyn party barrage
8 shot in crowd of 200 revelers at Bed-Stuy complex
A pair of gunmen opened fire on a huge party outside a Brooklyn public housing development early Monday, wounding eight young revelers, police said.
Shots rang out at the Roosevelt Houses on DeKalb Ave. near Marcus Garvey Blvd. in Bedford-Stuyvesant about 12:25 a.m., cops said.
Most of the crowd of at least 200 people ran for their lives, witnesses said.
Neighbor Primus Stevens, 53, said that from his 10th-floor window it looked like everyone was having fun before the bloodshed.
“They were doing dances,” he said. “They were making videos. They were cracking jokes. I seen them out there just horseplaying.”
Three men and five women between the ages of 18 and 27 were each struck one time, most in the arm or leg.
“I heard helicopters flying around the building, people running,” Stevens said. “Everyone was running out the back door, running and screaming.”
“They left everything and ran,” he added. “There’s Walkmans on the floor, there’s iPhones on the floor, there’s headphones.”
The youngest victim was shot in her abdomen and another woman was grazed in the nose. All the victims are expected to survive, officials said.
The grandmother of one of the victims, a 23-year-old man in stable condition at Brookdale University Hospital with a gun wound to the left shoulder, said someone called her from his cell phone with the bad news.
“I’m sitting here shaking,” she said. “I have a heart condition. I’m diabetic. I don’t need all of that.”
Her grandson, she said, lives most of the year in Connecticut but visits her during the summer. She said a video was being shot during the party.
“All I know is that he’s fine,” she said. “I pray every day for all of these kids.”
The gunmen ran off and have not been caught.
The shooting came a week after five people were shot at a raucous party in East New York. Two of the victims died that day and a third victim from the Aug. 8 shooting died Wednesday.
Before that, 10 people were wounded when a pair of still-wanted gunmen fired 40 bullets down a Queens street on July 31.
Police in Bedford-Stuyvesant are hoping shell casings recovered as evidence, along with a gun found inside a building on DeKalb Ave., provide critical clues.
Cops are also scouring surveillance cameras for images of the shooters.
Neighbors said the shooting happened even with four police cars parked near the scene.
A man who didn’t want to give his name said 30 shots were fired in about 10 seconds, despite the presence of a dozen or so cops nearby.
Gun violence in the city has slowed in recent weeks compared with last summer’s remarkable surge.
From Friday through Sunday, however, there were about 49 people shot citywide, including 29 on Sunday, police said. Five people were killed during those three days.
So far this year, 1,163 people have been shot citywide, 7% more than the 1,087 victims by this time last year, according to NYPD data.
Homicides are up 1%, with 277 slayings this year compared with 275 victims by this time last year.