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Eight People Shot on National Night Out Against Crime

By  Alan Neuhauser and Tuan Nguyen | August 8, 2012 8:08am | Updated on August 8, 2012 12:33pm

Six people were shot on National Night Out Against Crime Aug. 8, 2012, including three people outside the Cornelius J. Drew-Alexander Hamilton Houses at Frederick Douglass Boulevard and West 143rd Street.
Six people were shot on National Night Out Against Crime Aug. 8, 2012, including three people outside the Cornelius J. Drew-Alexander Hamilton Houses at Frederick Douglass Boulevard and West 143rd Street.
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DNAinfo/Trevor Kapp

NEW YORK — Shootings in The Bronx, Harlem and Brooklyn left eight people, including four teenagers, hurt just hours after Mayor Michael Bloomberg toured the city for National Night Out Against Crime Tuesday.

One man was left in serious condition, but the rest of the victims were in stable condition at local hospitals, the NYPD said. Two men were taken into custody in connection with the later shooting in Harlem.

Gunfire first erupted near 11 p.m. in both Brooklyn and The Bronx. 

In Williamsbridge, The Bronx, inside the Agnes Haywood Playground a 17-year-old boy and two girls, ages 14 and 18, were shot, police and witnesses said, around 11 p.m.

All three victims were transported to Jacobi Medical Center.

A 33-year-resident, who declined to provide his name, said he heard "probably more than 10 gunshots…. I just closed the shade and ran to the other side of the house."

A witness, 46, who did not want his name used, said he was at the playground at the time and saw one of the women removed.

"She had blood over her chest area and her friends were worried if she could make it or not," said the 46-year-old man who wished to be anonymous. A woman's grey T-shirt, covered in blood, was still at the playground's entrance Wednesday, even as children played in sprinklers and enjoyed the swings.

Before the outbreak of gunfire, he said a group of teenagers had gathered in the park. "There were 10 to 20 kids hanging around at that time," he said. "It seemed that they had an argument before it happened."

Police were investigating the shooting. No arrests had been made as of Wednesday morning.

Minutes later in Brooklyn a 31-year-old man was shot at 237 Cleveland St., near Atlantic Avenue in East New York, the FDNY said. The suspects fled on foot down Atlantic Avenue, police said, and the man was transported to Brookdale Hospital and is in stable, but serious, condition.

Just a half an hour later, officials said a 19-year-old was shot on the southwest corner of West 114th Street and St. Nicholas Avenue, suffering from bullet wounds in his right thigh and left forearm. He was at St. Luke's Hospital in stable condition Wednesday morning, police said, and an investigation was ongoing.

Then, at 1:45 a.m., two women and a man, ages 21, 29, and 20, were shot outside the Cornelius J. Drew-Alexander Hamilton Houses at Frederick Douglass Boulevard and West 143rd Street in Harlem.

It appeared the victims were "deliberate" targets, a police source said, but the circumstances remained under investigation.

''I heard four shots. It was consecutive. Then it was just quiet," said Terrell Frazier, 212, who lives the next housing block over from where the shooting took place.

The man and one of the women were transported to Harlem Hospital, cops said. The third woman was taken to St. Luke's Hospital.

Two men, aged 20 and 21,  were arrested and were awaiting charges Wednesday morning. Police found two firearms.

The shooting occurred only a few hours after Bloomberg, Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly and Council Speaker Christine Quinn visited Harlem's 32nd Precinct for National Night Out — dubbed America's Night Out Against Crime — which aims to reduce crime by building relationships between cops and the communities they police.

Bloomberg, who visited all five boroughs Tuesday night, touted what he said was a reduction in crime in the Harlem neighborhood, citing a 36-percent drop since 2001.