NY Times
It seemed like an ordinary Saturday night on a stretch of 37th Avenue in Queens: Men gathered in front of a barbershop, a restaurant hosted a birthday party and a shopkeeper waited for customers inside a meat market.
But chaos arrived about 10.40pm local time, when two gunmen wearing hoodies and masks rounded a corner and released a hail of bullets, the police said. They were aiming at three men in front of the barbershop believed to be members of the Trinitarios gang, but also struck seven bystanders, the police said.
The gunmen hopped on a pair of waiting scooters driven by accomplices who sped away, surveillance video showed.
The mass shooting in North Corona, a Latino enclave where gun violence seldom occurs, drew the Democratic and Republican mayoral nominees to the scene, where they called on New York City to step up its attacks on gangs and gun violence.
Mr Eric Adams, the Democratic nominee and a former police captain who ran on his law enforcement record and a promise to crack down on crime, warned that the violence would only worsen without adequate intervention.
"We are losing the grip on public safety, and we have to respond immediately and treat this like the crisis that it is," said Mr Adams, who is likely to become the city's next mayor.
He called on the city to target gun violence with a joint gangs and guns task force tightly coordinated among federal, state and city agencies and repeated his support for resurrecting a plainclothes police unit to hunt illegal guns.
The Republican nominee, Mr Curtis Sliwa, called for expanding the Police Department's gang unit and database as well as providing more money to pay confidential informants.
Earlier in the day, the police released surveillance video of the gunmen and their accomplices and pleaded for the public's help to solve the crime.
Chief of Detectives James Essig said he was disturbed by what he saw as "a brazen, coordinated attack".
He said: "Two guys just stick their arms out, walk down a very crowded street at 10.30 at night, where there're parties going on, restaurants going on, crowded streets. "After they fire at least 37 shots - that we know of - they calmly get on the back of the scooters and take off," he added. "So very brazen, to say the least."
All the victims were expected to survive, the chief said. There were no arrests in the shooting on Sunday afternoon, and police had not determined a motive. The Queens shooting was one of six that police recorded on Saturday, with a total of 18 victims.
