Three people — two women and a four-year-old girl — where hit by stray bullets when a gunman took aim at another man in Times Square on Saturday afternoon, police said.
Police were called to the area near W. 44th St. and Seventh Ave. around 4:55 p.m.
The victims were rushed to local hospitals. Two victims taken to Bellevue Hospital, including the little girl, did not suffer life-threatening wounds, said police.
None of the three victims were known to each other, law enforcement sources said. One of the injured woman is 23 years old, and the other is 42 years old.
The mayhem began when two men on a street corner started arguing, and one of them pulled a gun, said police sources.
“I heard three loud shots,” said Sandy Espinoza, 42, a visitor from Illinois who says she was standing at W. 46th St. and Seventh Ave. when the gunfire erupted.
“Everybody was running,” Espinoza said. “People were panicking and screaming. It was like a stampede of people. We were worrying we were going to get run over by people. We ran with everyone else.”
One of the wounded woman screamed, “My leg!” recounted Khadim Sakho, 25, a street vendor from Manhattan.
Sakho believed the child was also hit in the leg.
“They were bleeding and the lady was crying,” he said.
The 4-year-old, who is from Brooklyn, was in a stroller and accompanied by members of family, said police sources.
Seems like bad old days again in the new Times Square…
Why wait for Broadway to re-open and spend a grand on Hamilton when you can see a duel between two shitty gunmen on the street?
Looks like none of the 80 extra cops the NYPD deployed in the area to tamp down on vagrancy were not around to catch these two thugs when they started squabbling.
de Blasio’s new vaccine program to encourage tourists to get shots on Broadway is sure coming back to haunt him now.
But not more than this bon mot he vomited about the rise in gun violence at his last media availability two days ago:
“Anyone who doesn’t believe in New York City doesn’t know what the hell they are talking about.”
It isn’t that nobody believes in New York City, it’s that no believes you.
In something that hasn’t been seen in probably decades, Commissioner Shea held a news conference. Even though he implied how reform laws are causing upticks in crime, he still liberally peppered most of reporters questions about the gun violence coming to Times Square with the same b.s. exclusivity talking points about how NYC is the safest in world
Conspicuous by his expected absence was the Mayor of New York City, who decided to hide and tweet from his celly instead of standing by Shea and other NYPD high brass to avoid being accountable for his defiant insouciance of the gun violence and other violent crimes rising fast during his recovery for all of us.
Also nowhere to be found was Speaker Corey Johnson or any of the City Council cronies. But maybe it’s better because most of them have been arrogantly acting like their law forcing the closing of Rikers is not having a deleterious impact on the streets and subways.
Among all this blather about the greatest safest city and anemic and lack of responses by elected officials, it had to take a young teenager of color to bring the knowledge about what this recent brazen daylight shooting signifies about the existential state of violence and fear that’s gripping this city in a news brief from PIX News:
“It’s terrible because it shows you the state that New York’s in, you know. And it really, you know, hints towards a lack of leadership from any of our representatives, you know, who really don’t seem to care about repetitive events such as these going around in our city” (It gets cut off there, because PIX needs to maintain brevity to make time for their daily 8 segment weather reports on each hour newscast)
This kid sounds more in touch with the realities on the streets than anyone in City Council and certainly more than the oblivious mayor and at least 8 candidates running in the Democrat primary for mayor right now. All he’s said here basically that the progressive answer to solve the daily gun violence is for them to act like they give a shit about it as much as to acknowledge and recognize it instead of looking at this crisis (as well as other sociological crises) through ideological prisms (unless a stray bullet finds it way to crack them).
Which shows that the leadership the city lacks will continue in perpetuity.
Same as it ever was.
Impunity City 
I haven’t been to Times Square since even before the debacle with those painted naked chicks (so, we’re talking maybe about six, seven years?). I could tell even then that the bad old days were on their way back. I saw a NY Press in a pile on the ground next to a guy and grabbed a copy (remember, NY Press was free). The guy said, “It’s a dollar.” I thought he was kidding and laughed, but then as I walked away he screamed, “GIMME MY DOLLAR!!!” Luckily, it was so crowded that I just blended into the crowd before the guy could assault me. That was the last time I went out there.
It seems as though just not NYC but all of the United States and even the world wants to go back to the bad old days, be it the Cold War, Nazi Germany, Jim Crow South, Confederacy. Imagine how sick the world is today to romanticize everything that was bad in the past and want to bring it all back. I am seriously thinking of becoming a recluse the way things are going.
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