Times Square shooting: Three shot in NYC including toddler, police say

The shooting happened in broad daylight at the busy tourist spot

Three people, including two women and a four-year-old child, were unintended targets of a shooting in New York City’s Times Square on Saturday evening, according to police.

They are expected to survive, and are being treated for non-life-threatening injuries at Bellevue Hospital. The toddler was struck in the leg, while a 23-year-old woman got hit in the thigh and a 44-year-old woman was shot in the foot, according to authorities.

New York have released footage of an individual potentially connected to the shooting.

The shooting occurred around 5pm, three senior New York Police Department officials told NBC New York, near the corner of West 44th Street and 7th Avenue. The shooting occurred amid a dispute between a group of men.

The 23-year-old victim is a tourist from Rhode Island, while the 43-year-old woman is from New Jersey.

“The perpetrators of this senseless violence are being tracked down and the NYPD will bring them to justice,” New York mayor Bill de Blasio tweeted on Saturday. “The flood of illegal guns into our city must stop.”

Police warned that they were cordoning off the scene of the incident for their investigation and could cause delays through the busy Manhattan crossroads.

“Expect traffic delays, road closures, and a heavy presence of emergency personnel in the area of West 44th Street and 7th Avenue in Manhattan,” read a tweet on Saturday from New York City Emergency Management. “Avoid the area.”

A suspect reportedly fled the scene of the shooting, according to Fox 5 New York. A police investigation into who shot the pair is ongoing and no arrests have been made yet.

Video of the scene of the shooting from CBS New York shows at least five officers, as well as numerous police cruisers, sectioning off the center of Times Square, as throngs of masked tourists walk by.

While many expected gun violence to decrease during the pandemic, when crowded meeting places were closed and people sent to stay at home, it has surged during the coronavirus.

In 2020, nearly 20,000 Americans died from gun violence, the highest rate of any year in the last two decades. Last year, another 24,000 died by suicide using a firearm.

What’s more, these deaths were disproportionately concentrated in communities of colour.

“There are many communities across this country that are dealing with ever-present gun violence that is just part of their daily experience,” Mark Barden, a co-founder of the gun violence prevention group Sandy Hook Promise, told The Washington Post. “It doesn’t get the support, the spotlight, the national attention. People don’t understand that it’s continuous and it’s on the rise.”

The US dwarfs other countries when it comes to ownership. A 2018 analysis showed there were 120 guns for every 100 people in America, more than twice the second-highest country on that metric, which was Yemen, a country in the midst of a civil war.