A person of interest is in custody in the shooting death of a 1-year-old boy who was hit by gunfire late Sunday while his family was enjoying a cookout on the sidewalk in Brooklyn, three law enforcement sources with direct knowledge of the case told News 4 Thursday. Three other people were wounded in the fray.
According to sources, the US Marshals Regional Fugitive Task Force and the NYPD cuffed the person of interest in Brooklyn. The individual was being held at the 79th precinct, as investigators try to determine if the person of interest could be connected to any other shootings. No other details were immediately available.
The child's grandfather got choked up after hearing police had someone in custody. He said he wanted to share the information with his daughter, the child's mother, but she was busy making funeral plans for the infant.
Authorities had said two men walked up to the gathering on Madison Street in Bed-Stuy just before midnight that night and started shooting from across Raymond Bush Park. Family members rushed baby Davell Gardner Jr. to the hospital, but he later died. He had been shot in the stomach.
The others who were shot were expected to survive, according to authorities. A 35-year-old man was shot in the groin; a 27-year-old man was hit in the ankle, and a 36-year-old man took a bullet in the leg.
The shooting came at the end of a fourth week of increased gun violence, with more than twice the number of shootings recorded that week over the same time period last year.
Local
The NYPD's shooting database logged 43 shootings last week, compared to 13 last year - that's a 231 percent increase. The department says five people were killed in those shootings compared with 10 last year. On Saturday, city officials launched a pilot program created to combat the rise in shootings.
News 4 obtained data from the NYPD on shootings in New York City between January 1 and July 12 that reflect a 70 percent increase over the same period last year. One hundred fifteen victims of shootings this year have died - that's up from 69 victims in the same six-month period last year.
| Ages | 2020 (777 Victims) | 2019 (456 Victims) |
| 0-9 | 7 | 3 |
| 10-17 | 46 | 34 |
| 18-24 | 215 | 125 |
| 25-30 | 223 | 123 |
| 31-40 | 185 | 97 |
| 41-59 | 91 | 67 |
| 60+ | 10 | 7 |
