One day after NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly held a press conference in Crown Heights to publicize a sting on local merchants who sold marijuana, three teens were shot in the neighborhood by a rooftop sniper. Police say the gunman opened fire around 3:30 p.m. yesterday afternoon, raining bullets down on Franklin Avenue near the intersection with President Street. The gunfire sent pedestrians running for their lives, and two bloody teens crashing into an accountant's office. "The first thing I thought was that the shooter was following them," accountant John Sesay tells the Daily News.
Witnesses say up to nine shots may have been fired at a group of teens walking along Franklin Avenue. "Everyone was just coming from school, and shots rang out from the roof," says one bystander. "When the first one went off, everyone was screaming... It was scary!" According to the FDNY, four people were taken to Kings County Hospital, two of them in serious condition with gunshot wounds. The NYPD confirms that three people were shot, and the victims sustained non-life threatening injuries.
One local resident tells Channel 11 that when he saw two of the victims after the shooting, "One was in the wheelchair, he was laughing and talking. Another was in a stretcher smiling and talking. Like it was no big deal. Young people, you know how they are."
