A 1-year-old girl and a 32-year-old man were wounded as innocent bystanders during a Bronx daylight shooting Monday, according to police.
The gunfire broke out around 4 p.m. In front of 726 Courtlandt Ave. In the Melrose section, the NYPD said. A 32-year-old man took a bullet to his ankle, while a baby seated inside a parked 2023 Honda Civic suffered minor injuries from shattered glass.
The Honda had been carrying the 1-year-old and a 16-year-old girl, police said. The teenager escaped unharmed, but a bullet fragment struck the vehicle and blew out a window. EMS transported both victims to Lincoln Hospital in stable condition.
Law enforcement sources said the teen and the infant had no connection to the wounded man. Neither victim appears to have been the intended target, sources added.
Surveillance footage from the scene captured the moments leading up to the shooting. A figure dressed in all black walks up the block with a hand in a pocket, passing the Honda, before pulling a gun and appearing to fire at someone off-camera across the street. The shooter is then seen fleeing. It remains unclear from the clip whether that same gunfire shattered the Civic’s glass. The video ends with a man emerging from a nearby building to check on the Honda’s passengers and rushing them inside.
Neighbor Just Moore had been walking home from grocery shopping with his 11-month-old daughter when he came upon the chaotic scene.
“It’s stuff like this that’s the reason I don’t wear headphones when I’m out with her,” Moore said. “You always have to be aware of something that’s going on.”
Moore, a father, said shootings in the Bronx did not shock him. The timing and location did.
“It’s a dangerous situation in a relatively quiet area in a relatively quiet time of the day,” he said.
Local resident David Valentin was at home watching television when the gunfire erupted. He estimated he heard between eight and ten shots.
“I said ‘it sounds like a gun, but it’s school time,'” Valentin said.
He called the broad daylight violence “crazy.”
“Whatever person did that, they have to find him and get him off the streets. Because that’s dangerous,” he said.
No arrests had been made as of Monday evening, and the investigation remains ongoing, police said.
