Violence erupted in Brooklyn after an otherwise peaceful, jubilant, and colorful West Indian Day Parade Monday.
At 6:30PM, a dispute between two men on St. John's Place near Utica Avenue in Crown Heights ended with the fatal stabbing of a 26-year-old man. CBS reports police arrested 20-year-old Gabriel Hernandez, who they said stabbed his victim in the neck.
Thirty minutes earlier at Eastern Parkway and Bedford Avenue, another man, 27, was stabbed in the neck. Leandre Mallinckrodt was taken to Kings County Hospital where he was pronounced dead.
During the parade Monday, a 24-year-old man and a 32-year-old woman were both shot. Both injuries were not considered life-threatening.
“The young lady was dancing in the street and there was loud music coming from the truck,” one witness told The New York Post. “At first she thought she got stabbed. But when she pulled up her clothes and looked at the wound, she realized she was shot and she freaked a little bit. She wasn’t hurt badly. She was able to walk over and speak to the cop and the ambulance came and took her away on the truck. It happened very quickly and nobody heard the shot."
State Senator Eric Adams told The New York Times of the violence, "It’s always unfortunate when you have a million-plus people here peacefully enjoying the parade and you have a small number who will do a violent act and that becomes the story."
Police presence was high at Monday's parade as last year's festivities were also marred by violence.
Over the course of a bloody three-day Labor Day weekend in 2011, 67 people were shot across New York City, and 13 people died. The violence culminated in a police shootout in Crown Heights after the parade, which claimed the life of two people, including innocent bystander, 57-year-old Denise Gay.
Also during last year's parade, City Councilman Jumaane Williams and Kirsten John Foy, a former aide to Public Advocate Bill de Blasio, were arrested and roughed up by NYPD cops after walking past police barricades to an event at the Brooklyn Museum. Both had had permission to cross the barricades . The arrests sparked criticism of the NYPD's controversial stop-and-frisk program which critics say unfairly targets blacks and Latinos. Both Williams and Foy are black.
After last year's parade, a racist Facebook group run by NYPD cops, titled "No More West Indian Day Parade," was exposed. Less than two weeks ago, 17 cops were disciplined for their online comments.
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