Tourist struck by stray bullet while walking with relatives in Times Square

No arrests have been made while police remain on lookout for suspects

An innocent bystander was shot in the back by a stray bullet on Sunday as he was walking with his family in Times Square, New York.

Samuel Poulin, 21, a Marine, was with his wife, sister and brother-in-law on West 45th Street and 7th Avenue near Broadway when he became the unintended target during a shooting involving a dispute between two groups of men.

He was hit by a ricocheting bullet just after 5.15pm — just a block away from where a 4-year-old girl and two others were shot in another shooting incident in May.

Mr Poulin was seen being taken to the hospital on a stretcher after the shooting, which was recorded by bystanders and surveillance cameras. He looked alert, sitting in an upright position as he was taken away. He remains in stable condition at Bellevue Hospital.

A group of six suspected CD peddlers was arguing when one pulled out a gun and fired several shots, the police said.

An eyewitness, Sydney Santana, who was visiting from New Orleans, said everyone was confused when she heard a “loud pop”.

“We were sitting at Juniors when a loud pop happened and everybody ran for the hotel. They ran inside,” she told the New York Post. “The police instantly marked off both sides of the street and they told us we couldn’t go anywhere.”

The NYPD has launched a manhunt for two men who it said were involved in the shooting.

“The news of another shooting in Times Square, in broad daylight, is a chilling reminder of the rising threat of gun violence across our city,” Eric Adams, a 2021 New York City mayoral election candidate said in a Sunday night statement.

“The spike in victims and incidents are not just statistics on a report; the trauma and bloodshed are real. We cannot have a real economic recovery from Covid-19 if our centres of business and tourism are perceived to be unsafe,” he added.

This latest shooting incident came amid a spree of gun violence in the US. There have been 680 shooting incidents so far this year in New York, an increase of 53 per cent from the same period to June last year, according to the NYPD’s crime stats portal.