A 15-year-old boy was fighting for his life after being shot in the back on a Brooklyn street Monday afternoon, police said.
The teenager was struck on 62nd Street near 20th Avenue in Bensonhurst around 1 p.m., according to cops.
Police sources said the shooting broke out as part of an argument — but the confrontation did not appear to be gang-related.
EMS rushed the boy to Maimonides Medical Center, where he was listed in critical condition, police said.
The suspect was described as a black male wearing a grey sweatshirt with dark sweatpants. He also wore a black mask over his face.
Security footage from the scene showed him walking down the sidewalk amongst a crowd of teens, before suddenly drawing a handgun and opening fire across the street.
The suspect then took off running as the teens around him fled for cover. Witnesses told ABC 7 that the victim tried to run, but collapsed about a half-block away. He could be seen limp and being loaded into an ambulance after police performed CPR.
Neighbor Isaac Freithe, 50, told The Post he was working from home when he heard the shots ring out and began filming the scene.
“I was just in my apartment when I hear eight or nine shots,” he said. “I go out and see eight or nine guys maybe between 15 or 16 years old and they’re running away.”
“And I go out in my apartment and I can see the boy falling in the street.”
“It was in this moment he was like dead. But no! The police touched him here, and he had no pulse,” Freithe said, miming CPR compressions. “And he started breathing again.”
“It’s the quietest neighborhood. Literally the worst thing that happens is your window gets busted at night,” neighborhood resident Moshe Hayum said. “Nothing ever happens in this neighborhood.”
“Recently in the summer there’s been a couple of fights in the FDR school in the park. They had to close the park for two nights to calm the tensions. But otherwise literally if you talk to anybody who lives here, nothing ever happens in this neighborhood” he said.
Another resident living near the crime scene told Brooklyn Paper they’d also seen a number of fist fights between two groups of local high school teens in the area in recent days, and that they thought the shooting was connected to those disputes.
Freithe said he’d recently called the police on a number of boys who started smoking marijuana under his window.
“What happens is every day after school, the guys coming here I had many problems with them because they smoke marijuana near my upstairs everyday,” he said. “And sometimes I said please go to your home to smoke because there’s smoke into my apartment through the windows.”
He said he thought they were the same kids involved in the shooting. No arrests have been made, and the scene remains roped off as police continue their investigation.
He is the latest youth to become a victim of gun violence in the Big Apple.
Last week, a 3-year-old boy and his 6-year-old brother were caught in the crossfire of a brazen gunfight in The Bronx. They spent five days in the hospital before being released over the weekend.
At least 600 people have been shot in more than 500 incidents in New York City so far this year, according to NYPD statistics released last week.
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