Four people are dead and three injured after an early morning shooting on Saturday in Brooklyn, New York, law enforcement officials said.
The shooting happened at 6:55 a.m. in the Crown Heights neighborhood at what New York Police Department officials described as “an illegal gambling location.”
At least 15 shots were fired, and as of Saturday morning police had recovered two guns so far — a nine-millimeter handgun and a revolver. NYPD Chief of Detectives Dermot Shea said he would not be surprised to find more.
“We have four males deceased inside,” Shea said, adding that their ages range from 32 to 49. “They are still at the scene. We are waiting on the medical examiner’s office.”
Three other people, two men and one woman, were injured by gunfire. Shea said they are being treated at a hospital and their wounds are not life-threatening. An eighth person was injured as he tried to escape the firefight.
Two of the dead men were from out of town, while the others resided in Brooklyn. It is unclear if the men who are not from Brooklyn came specifically to play at the gambling hall, which Shea said appeared to focus on card and dice games.
Shea said that police had recovered video from inside the establishment as well as from the street to find out what else had occurred. They also have an officer’s bodycam footage, and were interviewing the officers and canvassing the neighborhood.
No arrests had been made as of mid-morning Saturday.
The illegal gambling site is located two blocks from the NYPD’s 77th precinct, but Rodney Harrison, the NYPD chief of patrol, said they had seen no signs of illegal activity.
“We don’t have any complaints over the last few years at this location,” he said. “We have no activity or no concerns.”
There were 21 shooting victims in New York City over the past year, according to NYPD’s data. The number of shooting victims in the city has declined by 85 percent over the past 26 years.
