The gunman who killed an onlooker and wounded four others at Monday’s West Indian Parade in Brooklyn was a gang member with a score to settle, NYPD officials said Wednesday — and whose target was the 16-year-old boy he shot in the arm, police sources told the Daily News.
The revelation came during a Police Department press conference where top cops insisted this year’s parade was one of the safest on record despite the mass shooting that claimed the life of a 25-year-old man.
“I’m not speaking without regard to the victim who lost his life or the four other victims hurt by gunfire,” NYPD Chief of Department Jeffrey Maddrey said at Police Headquarters Wednesday. “But the NYPD was prepared. During this weekend we took numerous guns off the streets. We kept hundreds of thousands — upwards to a million people — safe.”
Police said 35 guns were confiscated over the Labor Day weekend in the five Brooklyn precincts that link to the West Indian Day Parade route. After the Monday afternoon shooting, another 13 guns were seized, some along the parade route just feet from where the onlookers were shot.
Nearly all of the people arrested for the illegal guns were gang members, cops said.
“Every one of those guns were loaded,” NYPD Deputy Commissioner of Operations Kaz Daughtry said. “Every last one of those live rounds in there was a life that was saved.”
Yet the father of Denzel Chan, the man fatally shot during the parade, said police officials didn’t make the event safe enough.
“If they seized every gun, then Denzel would be safe today,” Collin Dover, Chan’s dad, told the Daily News. “If it’s safe, how are guns coming in? How did the guns reach the parade? That’s what they got to find out.”
Denzel Chan, 25, died after being shot during the West Indian Day Parade. (Courtesy family)
The shooting at the corner of Eastern Parkway and Franklin Ave. in Crown Heights occurred during the middle of the parade. The J’Ouvert celebration that traditionally precedes the parade at daybreak “went off with no problems,” Maddrey said.
“Halfway through the West Indian Day Parade some fool decides to fire a gun into a crowd,” Maddrey said.
Chief Jerry O’Sullivan of the NYPD Detectives Bureau said that a single shooter jumped over a police barricade before opening fire into the crowd.
The gunman was aiming at a 16-year-old boy, the youngest of the five victims, a police source with knowledge of the case said.
Chan was shot in the stomach and died at the hospital a short time later, cops said. The other surviving victims included 64-year-old Marius Sirju, his 69-year-old sister-in-law Gertrude Lake, and a 36-year-old man. All are expected to recover, NYPD officials said.
The gunman ran off in the ensuing chaos. As of Wednesday, no arrests have been made.
“We believe this is an isolated incident,” O’Sullivan said. “We believe this is gang-related based on the people we have identified at the scene and fleeing from the scene.
“So far our investigation shows this was one shooter that created this incident,” he said.
O’Sullivan didn’t disclose a motive for the shooting other than ongoing strife between Brooklyn gangs. Investigators are getting “a tremendous amount of help” from community members who are sharing video they took at the time of the shooting as well as what they heard on the street, the chief said.
The shooting was the only act of violence to occur during the parade, police said.
“The NYPD has drastically reduced violence at this event,” said Maddrey, who recalled when shootings and other acts of violence were commonplace during the popular Labor Day event, one of the city’s largest parades. “We have cut shootings down and cut violence down, and we will continue to do that.”
Front page of the New York Daily News for Sept. 4, 2024.
NYPD Chief of Crime Control Strategies Michael Lipetri said four shootings took place over the entire Labor Day weekend in the five commands that border the West Indian Day Parade — one more than last year.
The Labor Day weekend follows the safest August the NYPD has seen in more than three decades with 15 people murdered, a record low. It was a 53% drop from last August, when 32 people were killed.
Police also investigated 74 shootings in August citywide, a 14% drop from the 87 that occurred last August, cops said.
The NYPD deployed a fleet of drones, carefully placed surveillance cameras, and sent a massive number of officers to cover the J’Ouvert celebration and West Indian Day Parade, officials said.
“Of course we take responsibility for someone getting hurt out here,” Maddrey said. “But I want people to know we put a lot of energy and effort into this. Overall we kept New Yorkers safe, but one person decided they had the right to [shoot someone], which they didn’t, and we will bring that person to justice.”