A 41-year-old man was fatally shot aboard a city bus in the Bronx on Monday after an apparent dispute between the man and the shooter, who the man complained was talking on his phone too loudly, the authorities said.
The police said they were still searching for the shooter, who ran off the bus.
The shooting occurred on a Bx36 bus near the intersection of East Tremont Avenue and White Plains Road in the Bronxdale neighborhood at about 2:30 p.m.
Two law enforcement officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation, said that the man had gotten upset that the suspect was yelling into his phone.
The victim, whom officials identified as Jonathan Pettigrew, was shot in the abdomen and pronounced dead at Jacobi Medical Center in the Bronx, the police said.
Mr. Pettigrew had seven children and was raising the youngest, a 7-year-old girl, by himself, two of his aunts said. He worked in catering, they said, and lived in the Soundview neighborhood, not far from the route of the bus.
“He was probably going to get his daughter from school,” said one of his aunts, Sandra Ferguson. “This is his routine: He drops her off at school, he goes to work, he gets off work, he picks her up. I just can’t believe this.”
The other aunt, Sabrina Vereen, said that Mr. Pettigrew doted on his youngest daughter. “He took real good care of that little girl,” she said.
A man who works at the Family Mexican Deli at the corner where the shooting happened said his store’s surveillance camera captured footage of a man getting out of the front of the bus and sprinting down White Plains Road. “The driver opens the bus, the guy gets out and he runs,” said the man, who provided only his given name, Ruben, and said he was a cook at the deli.
Deadly violence on city buses is rare, but in May 2025 a man was fatally stabbed on a shuttle bus in Brooklyn. A 13-year-old boy was fatally stabbed on a bus on Staten Island in 2023, and another man died after being stabbed on a bus in the Bronx in 2022.