Student Staggers to His HS After Being Shot on UWS; First of 3 Related Shootings on Tuesday

A 17 year old student staggered two blocks back to the Martin Luther King High School campus after getting shot twice in the abdomen by a 19 year old shooter who was apprehended in a yellow cab as he attempted to flee.

Two other shootings took place later in the day in East Harlem, one in which a 16 year old was hit in the leg and a 27 year old bystander was also hit by a bullet outside Harlem Renaissance High School. There was also a third shooting incident later that afternoon at 105th St. and Park Ave.

”Right now we are proceeding like they are all connected,” said NYPD chief of patrol John Chell.

The most serious incident of the day occurred in the Upper West Side shooting two blocks away from the Martin Luther King high school campus.

Cxhell said there was an argument involving “four or five teens, and then a gun was produced at approximately 9:50 am on Tuesday morning.”

The shooter was out on bail for a prior armed robbery cops said of the suspect, whose name was not revealed pending formal charges.

“He’s male, 19. He has three prior arrests, two for narcotic sales this year in 2023, and there’s an indictment for an armed robbery with a firearm in 2021,” said Chief of Patrol Chell at a press conference near the scene of the shooting on Amsterdam Avenue and 68th Street. “And he is currently out on bail in that case,” Chell added.

The victim and suspect had once been classmates, cops said, but no longer were. It was not clear which of the six high schools housed in the Martin Luther King school campus on 66th and Amsterdam the victim attended, although one source said he was a student at the Maxine Green School for Imaginative Study which is one of the schools in the building. All students in the school building went on lockdown. Cops at the press conference Tuesday afternoon emphasized that the shooting did not occur on school property.

Once the victim reached the MLK Jr building, another 911 was made and the victim was rushed by ambulance to the emergency room at New York Presbyterian Weil-Cornell Hospital and was said to be in stable condition after undergoing surgery.

The shooting suspect was apprehended a block away while trying to make a getaway in a yellow cab.

Chief of Patrol Chell had high praise for the community reaction.

“These actions by this community up here, allowed our police and officers in the 2-0 precinct to quickly apprehend the person we believe is the shooter, firearm recovered and no further incidents.”

But the sense of relief at the apprehension of one shooter did not last long as it was the first of three shootings in a five hour span that police now believe are connected.