UPPER WEST SIDE — The double shooting on West 94th Street Sunday night shocked neighbors on the block, sparking fears of a return to darker days.
Two men were shot outside a public housing building at 120 W. 94th Street about 11:30 p.m. Sunday, police said. Cops believe two groups of people exchanged shots, but the shooting isn't believed to be gang-related or linked to any ongoing neighborhood feud, a police source said.
"It reawakens a bad memory of the tougher times in the city," said 76-year-old Laura Webber, who's lived on West 94th Street between Columbus and Amsterdam for more than 40 years. "It makes me sad, or angry, or both. Or afraid."
One man was shot in the leg and the other was shot in the stomach, police said. They were taken to St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital. The man with the leg wound was treated and released, while the other man was still hospitalized as of Monday evening, police sources said.
No arrrests have been made in Sunday's shooting on West 94th Street, and the shooter is still at large, police said.
Sunday's incident was just a few blocks from a November shooting that injured three young men in front of 175 W. 90th Street, at Amsterdam Avenue, where a suspect hid from police in a garbage chute in July.
Resident Dennis Santana, who's lived there 40 years, said the shooting surprised him. "It's always quiet around here. Nobody gives anybody any trouble," Santana said as he walked his dog Monday night.
"I heard the shots and I was shocked," said Susan Beecher, a ceramacist who lives in a Mitchell-Lama affordable housing building on 94th Street. "I thought, are those really gunshots?"
The West 94th Street block, which was part of an urban renewal project in the late 1950s, is today a mix of public housing buildings, Mitchell Lama apartments and high-end brownstones. The area has improved steadily over the past several decades, said Beecher, and her friend Webber, a former junior high school teacher.
Webber said she remembered when the corner of Amsterdam Avenue and West 94th Street was a hot spot for drug dealing. Now it's home to a Screme gelato bar.
On Monday night, a police patrol car was parked outside 120 W. 94th Street.
"We're just here to make sure everything is OK," said the officer behind the wheel.
Webber stopped on her way home to tell the cops in the patrol car about a group of nearby teens who appeared to be in the early stages of a fight.
"We had very very bad scenes," Webber said of the block's past. "We all lived through it and we got to the other side."
