Police flooded the streets around several Manhattan schools Wednesday morning after an eruption of gang-related violence left three people — including two teen students — with gunshot wounds the day before.
Eight NYPD vehicles and more than a dozen officers clustered in front of the Harlem Renaissance High School in East Harlem, about a block away from where a 16-year-old student and a 27-year-old bystander were shot Tuesday around 1 p.m.
A few miles to the southwest, six cop cars sat on the Upper West Side roads surrounding the Martin Luther King Jr. Educational Campus on Amsterdam Avenue, near the intersection where a 17-year-old high schooler was shot at least three times Tuesday morning, prompting the schools to go on lockdown.
Cops believe the incidents — as well as a third report of shots fired at East 105th Street and Park Avenue at around 3 p.m. — are all related, NYPD Chief of Patrol John Chell said at a press briefing in East Harlem following the shootings.
But the small army of New York’s Finest hasn’t necessarily calmed the nerves of anxious parents and students, several of whom said they were still perturbed after Tuesday’s events.
“I’ve been in terror since yesterday!” one Harlem mom said as she dropped her 11-year-old daughter off at the nearby Democracy Prep Harlem Charter School.
“They had them sheltering in place, and my daughter was texting me and they wouldn’t let me through,” she continued. “Oh my God! For hours. I panicked. This, this, this was the last straw. We’re moving. That’s it! My sister lives in Atlanta and we’re moving!”
Angelique Dunlap, a 24-year-old student at the American Musical and Dramatic Academy on West 61st Street, said she’d been walking by MLK HS on her way to school when the shots rang out.
“I literally saw the dude with the gun and heard the girls screaming,” Dunlap said. “It was really chaotic, I’ve been trying to calm myself down ever since … I still feel on edge, but I feel safer seeing so many police around — so long as they do their jobs and keep us safe.”
Teisha Wilson, a 17-year-old student at Urban Assembly School for Media Studies in the MLK building, agreed that she feels safer with all the cops present. But that didn’t stop her parents from lecturing her before she started her day.
“My parents gave me a long speech about being safe before I came to school today,” Wilson said. “My parents told me to watch out for anything suspicious and to be mindful who I talk to.”
Police shut down the main entrance to Harlem Renaissance HS Wednesday morning and pushed students through a side door, where officers working a metal detector screened them before they entered.
More cops patrolling the grounds might temporarily make up for a plummeting number of New York City school safety agents, which according to a Tuesday report has declined by nearly a quarter since February 2020.
As of last month, there were only 3,900 active NYPD safety agents, the report said. That’s almost 1,200 less than there were just before the pandemic, the city’s Independent Budget Office found.
But it wasn’t just students who were comforted by the site of more blue uniforms walking the streets.
Joel Sacramento, a 40-year-old barista at Boule & Cherie on Amsterdam Avenue, watched through the store window Tuesday as Cheick Coulibaly, 19, allegedly shot his 17-year-old victim at about 9:50 a.m.
Sacramento said the accused shooter and the victim had been part of a group of about seven teenagers who gathered outside the café to talk and smoke weed that morning.
A scuffle broke out, he said. But the pushing and shoving turned ugly when one man pulled out a gun and fired into the victim’s stomach.
“They were friends who started fighting,” Sacramento said. “I thought they were playing, then one pulled out a gun and started shooting. He was shooting from close range. Two shots — bang, bang. When the guy was on the ground, he shot him a third time.
“Two girls helped the guy walk down the street towards the school,” he said. “The girls were crying and hugging him.”
The victim — a student identified only as “Nas” — got up and told his friends he was okay, Sacramento said. The shooter sprinted away, heading uptown, only to be arrested shortly after.
Coulibaly — who was out on bail in a 2021 armed robbery case — has been charged with attempted murder, assault, criminal use of a firearm and criminal possession of a weapon. He was awaiting arraignment in Manhattan Criminal Court.
No arrests have been made in the other two incidents.
“I feel safer seeing all the police around today,” Sacramento added. “New York is not safe anymore. Everything’s changed since the pandemic. New York is dangerous now. “We need more police on the streets. But like yesterday, anything can happen any time.”