Five people, including a 6-year-old boy and his mother, were shot early Monday at an unofficial celebration of J’Ouvert, a daybreak event in Brooklyn that typically marks the start of Carnival in Caribbean cultures but was canceled this year because of the coronavirus.
The gunfire erupted shortly before 3 a.m. at the crowded intersection of Nostrand Avenue and Crown Street in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn, according to police. The boy was shot in his left leg and taken to Kings County Hospital with non-life-threatening injuries, police said. The mother, 47, and three men — all adults — were also shot in either their feet or legs and were hospitalized.
Investigators remained uncertain Monday about how many shooters were involved. Terence A. Monahan, chief of detectives of the New York City Police Department, said on Twitter on Monday morning that two men had been arrested in connection with the shootings and that two guns had been recovered. Monahan added that the investigation was “in its early stages and is ongoing.”
Video obtained by The New York Post shows scores of people marching through the streets, some playing musical instruments, when shots rang out. The video then shows people fleeing or taking cover behind lampposts. One person can be seen collapsing against a fence, presumably wounded, aided by police and passers-by.
J’Ouvert is traditionally held in the early morning hours before Brooklyn’s West Indian American Day Parade, a pageant of colorful Caribbean costumes and food that goes up and down Eastern Parkway. This year, however, both the pre-dawn festival and the parade were canceled because of safety measures banning groups of more than 50 people during the pandemic.
The shootings came amid a citywide spike in gun violence that has concerned police and City Hall officials and has been seized upon by President Donald Trump as part of his law-and-disorder reelection campaign.
In August, according to police statistics, shootings in New York more than doubled over the same period last year and killings rose by nearly 50%.
Denzel Smart, 19, lives in the same building as the young boy, named Maxwell, and his mother, identified as Patricia Brathwaite. Smart said Brathwaite also has a college-age daughter, Marisa, who recently left for school at SUNY Morrisville in upstate New York.
Smart said that he was on his way out of the building at 288 Crown St. on Sunday evening when he saw Maxwell outside. Maxwell’s arm was in a sling. “He told me he fell off a hoverboard and broke his arm but he was fine,” Smart said.
Smart said he returned between 3 and 4 a.m. to a scene of chaos.
“Coming home last night and seeing this whole block full of cops and all of this commotion, I was so confused because nothing happens over here,” he said.
On Thursday, police officials announced that they were going to monitor the streets of central Brooklyn to ensure that informal parties were not held in place of J’Ouvert, which has struggled in recent years with gun violence, including a series of killings near the parade route.
In 2015, an aide to Gov. Andrew Cuomo was fatally shot in the crossfire between dueling gangs during the morning celebration, prompting outrage and a call for more security. Police responded by moving the start time of J’Ouvert to 6 a.m. from 4 a.m. and by installing metal detectors at checkpoints along the parade route.
Doreen Verna, 56, said she was in her second-floor bedroom overlooking Crown Street, just west of Nostrand Avenue, on Monday morning when she heard what she first believed were firecrackers going off above the din of loud music.
“And then I saw the kids running, screaming,” Verna said.
She described the neighborhood, where she has lived for two years, as “basically decent” but added that she liked to be indoors after nightfall.
“I don’t want to get in the middle of anybody’s crossfire,” she said.
Lloyd John, 50, who lives across the street from the scene of the shooting, on Crown Street east of Nostrand, said he believed that the woman and boy who were wounded lived in his building.
“They’re upstanding people,” John said. “We say hi in the building. We talk. I’ll see the little boy and play with him.”
“What happened is sad,” John continued. “In this day and age in New York City, you’re supposed to be able to walk in the streets.”
Latrice Eleby was climbing into her car with her three daughters Monday morning when one of them noticed a gaping, nickel-sized hole just below a rear window.
It was a bullet hole.
“I was shocked,” Eleby said. “I was not expecting to wake up to something like that.”