Shootings mar Harlem's Memorial Day weekend
May 28, 2008
By Rocco Parascandola - NewsdayIssue date: 5/22/08 Section: Real News
Police said it appears that the victims were shot on Lenox, near 125th Street, with victims staggering as far north as West 128th Street.
The lone female victim, 17, who was grazed in the head, was treated at St. Luke's Hospital and released. The other victims, 13 to 18 years old, are expected to survive. The most seriously injured, Amos Gweh, 17, was shot in the chest and was in Harlem Hospital Center in serious but stable condition Tuesday.
"Right now, I am devastated," said Gweh's mother, Lashonda Gloster. "I told my son's friends not to retaliate. They are all riled up with one of their friends in the hospital. Retaliation is not the answer. I am not for that."
Gloster said the shooting stemmed from an earlier altercation between two groups that escalated when the groups ran into each other again.
Gloster said Gweh was not at the earlier altercation and had met up with one of the groups on his way to a barbecue. "My son has never been arrested a day in his life," she said. "He is an A student. ... This is not drug-related."
There were four other shootings farther north in Harlem, two at around the same time as the other shooting, and two Tuesday between 1:30 and 2 a.m. Those shootings, three sparked by a dispute and one committed during an attempted robbery, are not connected to one another or to the violence on Lenox Avenue. None suffered life-threatening injuries.
That was little consolation to Eugenia Stinson, 48, whose son, Marquis, 26, was shot twice in the side and once in the buttocks after he accidentally bumped into a man. "`That's how it is," she said the gunman told her son before opening fire. "The violence in this city has to stop," she said.
The shootings occurred as crime is down 2.72 percent citywide through Sunday, but murders and shooting victims are each up 10.4 percent.
The lone female victim, 17, who was grazed in the head, was treated at St. Luke's Hospital and released. The other victims, 13 to 18 years old, are expected to survive. The most seriously injured, Amos Gweh, 17, was shot in the chest and was in Harlem Hospital Center in serious but stable condition Tuesday.
"Right now, I am devastated," said Gweh's mother, Lashonda Gloster. "I told my son's friends not to retaliate. They are all riled up with one of their friends in the hospital. Retaliation is not the answer. I am not for that."
Gloster said the shooting stemmed from an earlier altercation between two groups that escalated when the groups ran into each other again.
Gloster said Gweh was not at the earlier altercation and had met up with one of the groups on his way to a barbecue. "My son has never been arrested a day in his life," she said. "He is an A student. ... This is not drug-related."
There were four other shootings farther north in Harlem, two at around the same time as the other shooting, and two Tuesday between 1:30 and 2 a.m. Those shootings, three sparked by a dispute and one committed during an attempted robbery, are not connected to one another or to the violence on Lenox Avenue. None suffered life-threatening injuries.
That was little consolation to Eugenia Stinson, 48, whose son, Marquis, 26, was shot twice in the side and once in the buttocks after he accidentally bumped into a man. "`That's how it is," she said the gunman told her son before opening fire. "The violence in this city has to stop," she said.
The shootings occurred as crime is down 2.72 percent citywide through Sunday, but murders and shooting victims are each up 10.4 percent.
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