Sunday, 27 December 2015

16 year old fatally shot going home on Christmas eve

They walked to the subway station on Jerome Avenue and said their goodbyes: Lashelle McDonald, 17, up the stairs to the No. 4 train, and Justin Morris, 16, presumably toward his new home in Yonkers, where his mother had moved the family last month to get away from the gangs that still proliferate in parts of New York City.

I heard the gunshots from the turnstile,” Lashelle said on Friday. A few minutes later, she emerged from the subway at 149th Street and got a text message. It said that Justin had been shot.

Beneath the elevated subway tracks, two groups of men began arguing, according to the police. Before long the verbal dispute took a more violent turn, in a dynamic that has been all too typical.

Several shots were fired around 10:55 p.m., the police said, and the groups of men scattered and fled. Justin was left on the pavement, shot several times in the back. He was pronounced dead at the scene, and his body was taken to St. Barnabas Hospital in the Bronx. Another man, 19, was taken there with two gunshot wounds in his back and a third to his buttocks; he was listed in stable condition.

What a pity.

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