An 11-year-old girl was killed on Monday after being caught in the crossfire of a shooting on a Bronx corner, police said.
The shooting took place at Westchester Avenue and Fox Street in Foxhurst just before 5 p.m. when two men drove by on a moped and opened fire, cops said.
Their target was a group of men also standing on the corner, but instead they shot the 11-year-old, who was visiting a nearby nail salon with a pal, according to police.
The victim, who was outside New Kim Nails on Fox Street when she was shot in the stomach, walked into the salon after being shot and passed out, according to witnesses.
“She was right next to me when it happened,” said the girl’s friend, 18-year-old Lillian Johnson.
“She got shot and then she came into the store … like she was trying to get away from the gunshots. She was holding her stomach saying, ‘Ow!'”
Johnson said the preteen soon passed out.
“She sat down in the chair and then she started getting unresponsive — she like leaned over on the chair,” Johnson said.
“And then they pulled down her jacket, checked the wound [where] she got shot in the stomach and then shortly after that she ended up passing out on the ground.”
A 20-year-old salon patron said she heard two gunshots before the young girl stormed into the salon.
“She was starting to change colors, turning blue,” Maya Jones said. “We didn’t know [where she was shot]. It was really bad until like her friend just zipped down her sweater and saw the blood on the gun wounds.”
An older woman applied pressure to the gunshot wound before an ambulance arrived, Johnson said.
The girl was rushed to Lincoln Hospital, where she died.
The preteen is the latest young victim of gun violence in the city. Several teenagers and children have been shot either intentionally or as innocent bystanders throughout the five boroughs in recent months.
“This is very difficult for us to accept,” Bronx detectives Deputy Chief Timothy McCormack said at a press briefing on Monday’s shooting. “This is the second child that’s shot in this borough this year — an 11-month-old and now an 11-year-old.”
The year started off with the shocking shooting of an 11-month-old girl in the Bronx on Jan. 19. The baby was struck by a stray bullet in the left cheek while sitting in a parked car with her mother. The girl underwent brain surgery the same month.
About three hours before the 11-year-old was shot in the Bronx, two teenage boys were struck by bullets on a Brooklyn street. An 18-year-old was struck in the torso and a 19-year-old was struck in the leg.
Last Wednesday, the 17-year-old son of an NYPD officer was struck by a bullet in the arm across from his Queens high school. The teenager was not the intended target, police said.
Last Thursday night in the Bronx, a 14-year-old boy was shot in the arm and a 15-year-old was shot in the leg by a pair of gunmen. Both young teens were hospitalized in stable condition, authorities said. Two nights before that shooting, a 17-year-old boy was fatally shot outside a Bronx grocery.
Earlier in the month, an 18-year-old girl was shot in the lobby of a Crown Heights building and died days later, while in a separate incident, a 13-year-old and 14-year-old were shot outside Central Park. Both teens suffered non-life-threatening injuries.
At the end of April, a 14-year-old girl was hit by a stray bullet in the neck and two 18-year-old boys were also shot in a gang-related hit, police said. All three teens survived the shooting.
