Bronx District Attorney Darcel D. Clark announced Monday that 10 individuals have been charged in connection with three Bronx shootings across the northeast Bronx that killed four people and injured seven more.
The top prosecutor and police officials said the late-summer shootings, which dominated local headlines, appear to have been retaliatory and gang-related. Clark said that law enforcement would turn its efforts towards investigating pipelines for trafficking firearms into the borough.
“ The time is now for a concerted and precise effort with the NYPD and our federal partners to stem the flow of weapons into our community,” Clark said.
Clark was especially distressed about the number of teens involved in the violence.
”We will determine who is putting the guns in the hands of these trigger pullers, in particular the youth, who are not even old enough to drive, vote, or drink— let alone purchase a gun,” she said.
The first of the three shootings was Aug. 23 at Haffen Park in Baychester, when gunmen fired over 50 bullets into a community basketball tournament, immediately killing 32-year-old Jaceil Banks and wounding three others. The mass shooting claimed its final—and youngest victim— 17-year-old Anthonaya Campbell, who had been shot in the face, a week later when she was removed from life support at Jacobi Medical Center.
Campbell’s funeral was on Saturday, where clergy members also shared concerns about young people and guns. At the end of the service the four Bishops officiating the funeral service at the New Testament Temple Church of God stood in front of hundreds of people there to celebrate a life cut short by gun violence and encouraged those who may be gun owners or know someone involved in violence to lay down their weapons.
“Encourage them to turn in their guns to us pastors,” said Bishop Paul Peart. “We’ll get rid of it. We don’t want to bury any more young people who have died by gunshot.”
But while Campbell was the final person to die from the shooting at Haffen Park, DA Clark and law enforcement officials said Monday that the ripples of violence following the mass shooting had just begun.
On Labor Day, Clark said that five people, one of them 16 years old, sought revenge for the Haffen Park attack when they allegedly drove to Allerton Avenue near White Plains Road and fired 13 shots. Four of the bullets hit and killed 24-year-old Jamari Henry, who officials believed to be an intended target of the shooting. Four others were also shot with non-life-threatening injuries.
The last shooting District Attorney Clark connected to the spate of violence also happened on Allerton Avenue on September 2 when a man allegedly shot 21-year-old Jontay Davis in the head and dumped his body behind St. Barnabas Hospital, according to law enforcement officials. Law enforcement charged the man with second-degree murder, first-degree manslaughter, and weapons possession.
District Attorney Clark said that Davis was related to one of the victims of the shooting on Allerton Avenue on Labor Day.
All-told, Clark said that the shootings discharged 70 bullets and NYPD recovered 13 guns, including one ghost gun recovered in connection with murder of Jontay Davis. Ballistics have connected some of the guns recovered from the string of violence in the Bronx to 13 other shootings across NYC and in South Carolina, according to law enforcement, but police have also identified bullets from firearms that have yet to be recovered.
The city periodically holds events where residents can turn in guns anonymously, often for a cash incentive. More information is available online at 311.com. Similarly, the city offers rewards for tips about illegal guns through the Gun Stop Program at 866-GUN-STOP.
