NEW YORK – A shooting at the city’s bustling Times Square saw two women and a 4-year-old girl injured, in an incident that United States authorities are still scrambling to understand, said police yesterday.
The incident took place just before 5pm local time at the intersection of 7th Avenue and 44th Street, a police spokesman told AFP.
The three victims are hospitalised in Manhattan, and their lives are not in danger, he added.
No arrests have yet been made, and police said the “investigation is ongoing” without giving further details.
Times Square, one of New York’s tourist hotspots before the Covid-19 pandemic, has changed since theatres all closed in March last year.
According to a recent report by the neighbourhood business association Times Square Alliance, the area recorded 25 violent crimes in the first quarter of 2021, up from 17 in the same period a year ago.
At the end of March, a video of an assault on an older woman of Asian descent shocked the neighbourhood.
A man with a criminal record who lived at a hotel near Times Square that had become a reception centre for the homeless was arrested and charged.
Neighbourhood theatres are set to start reopening on September 14, however, and Mayor Bill de Blasio recently announced a major campaign to revive tourism from June.
Shootings in the city have sharply increased since summer last year and the protests against police violence that followed the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, official data showed.
Crime in general went up 30% over the same period. – AFP, May 9, 2021
