48 hours in de Blasio's NYC: Six people are gunned down in Brooklyn, man is shot dead point-blank in Harlem and ANOTHER commuter is shoved onto subway tracks as city violence spirals out of control
At least five people were shot in Brooklyn on Sunday night at the end of a violent weekend that saw a man robbed and shot dead in Harlem on Saturday afternoon, and yet another subway traveler pushed onto the subway tracks.
The subway passenger, 29, was on the train with his girlfriend at around 11:30am on Saturday when a man who had been sleeping woke up and started shouting at them.
The couple got off the train at Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn, but the man followed them.
He then shoved the man onto the tracks, leaving him to scramble to safety. The victim was unharmed.
Police are searching for the black man (left) who attacked the man in a blue jacket on Saturday
The man, in a bright blue jacket, is seen being shoved onto the tracks at Atlantic Avenue
The blue jacketed-man managed to climb off the tracks and was unharmed in the attack
The attacker, dressed all in black, then left the scene of the assault
His attack came two days after 40-year-old Liliana Sagbaicela narrowly survived being pushed onto the tracks in Manhattan by a mentally-ill homeless person. She was shoved just as the train was coming into Union Station, and miraculously fell into a gap between the wheels and the walls of the platform.
Several hours after the subway incident on Saturday, Christopher Caraballo, 24, was shot in a robbery.
He was seen on surveillance cameras arriving at the Wagner Houses project shortly before 3:45pm.
Surveillance footage from the area showed that Caraballo had been walking on East 125th Street shortly before the shooting and passed the gunman, who turned around and followed him to the housing complex.
Caraballo, 24, is seen in green standing in the doorway of the Harlem housing project
The gunman, in a black hooded sweatshirt, had seen Caballo walk past and followed him
Caballo is pictured removing the chain from around his neck, shortly before he was shot
Caraballo is in the doorway, trying to get into the building, when the gunman approaches him and the two exchange words.
The suspect demanded that Caraballo took off a chain he was wearing around his neck, which Caraballo did and threw across the floor to the gunman.
The pair looked to be arguing over Caraballo's phone, and the gunman then shot him in the chest, grabbed the chain and ran off.
Caraballo is seen lying on the floor, reaching for his phone.
He later died in hospital.
Further gun violence happened in Brooklyn, where a large-scale shooting happened in the Bedford-Stuyvesant area.
Local reports suggested six people were shot at around 11:20pm on Sunday night.
Police counted 1,667 shooting victims in the city this year as of November 15 - double the number reported in 2019 in the same period, according to the New York Daily News.
The increase in shootings has even outpaced the growth in the homicide rate: NYPD data show 405 murders in the city this year as of November 15, which marks a 37 per cent increase on those reported in the same period of 2019.
Emergency responders and staff at hospitals are having to cope with the gunshot victims as well as the strains on the system from the pandemic.
'We know how to handle high call volume,' said EMT Ciara Ortiz, 29, who works at EMS Station 16 at Harlem Hospital.
But 2020 has been a blur 'on another level,' she told the paper.
'If I was to use one word to describe this year: Just chaos. Everyone is just overwhelmed.'
FDNY EMS union president Oren Barzilay says the strain is system-wide.
'I've never seen anything like this in the 25 years I've been here,' he said.
'We have people who are breaking down mid-tour and going home sick because the trauma has been too much from what's been happening the last few months, both from COVID and crime.'
Shooting cases more than doubled at Brookdale University Hospital in Brooklyn, from 93 in the first nine months of 2019 to 198 in the same period of 2020, a 113 per cent increase.
At Harlem Hospital, shooting victims have gone up by 97 per cent.
First respondents were called to Bedford Stuyvesant on Sunday night after six were shot
The condition of those injured in Sunday night's shooting was unclear
New York City is seeing a surge in gun violence across all five boroughs
It was unclear what had caused the confrontation in Brooklyn on Sunday night
And at Lincoln Hospital in the Bronx, the number of cases doubled exactly, rising from 58 to 116.
'It's very emotional for the staff. It just might be your family member,' said Beverly Brown, manager of Jamaica Hospital's trauma program.
'Each time you get a trauma you're going in there with the expectations like, 'Oh my God, I hope it's not somebody I know or somebody's kid.'
Dr Moustafa Mourad, a chief surgeon, told the Daily News: 'I see a lot of victims who are bystanders, accidental shootings. It's not always this targeted type of thing.
'There's a lot of sad stories of people who were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.'
