ALLERTON, The Bronx (PIX11) — Police are looking for multiple suspects after a 15-year-old boy was fatally shot in the stairwell of a NYCHA apartment building in the Bronx.
It happened during dinnertime two days after Christmas.
“I heard a loud bang, actually three loud bangs,” Leon Stafford, a resident of the building, told PIX11 News.
Stafford was home in his seventh-floor apartment in the Eastchester Gardens at 6:30 p.m. Saturday when he heard what sounded like three shots right outside his front door. That’s when he tried to see what was going on.
“Once I rushed to the door, it was an individual with a black COVID-19 mask, dreadlocks, black hoodie, black jacket,” Stafford told PIX11 News. “That’s what I witnessed as I saw three individuals running downstairs,” he added.
Police say 15-year-old Eric Aitkin of Waterbury, Connecticut, was shot in the chest in the seventh-floor stairwell at 1219 Adee Ave. He was rushed to Jacobi Hospital, where he was pronounced deceased.
Police also found a 14-year-old boy shot in the arm just a few blocks away. He is now listed in stable condition.
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“This neighborhood has been filled with gang violence,” Stafford said. “Police presence actually has not been enough,” he added.
Stafford is hoping surveillance cameras on the outside of his building caught clear pictures of the suspects, who he hopes will turn themselves in to the police.
“Whoever is involved, just come forward to the police because what you did was wrong,” Stafford told PIX11 News. “And if we keep killing each other, there has to be unity. We got to come together and love each other, not kill each other,” he added.
Police are also hoping more witnesses will come forward.
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