Who was Jameik Bishop? Bronx man, 18, killed after ambushed by shooter amid overnight NYC gun violence
THE BRONX, NEW YORK CITY: New York City on Saturday, April 24, witnessed a series of shootings and one teen was killed in the mayhem on the stoop of a residential building. Police identified him as Jameik Bishop who was shot around 11 pm on East 255th Street. Many people were left injured in the shootings that took place at different locations in Brooklyn, Manhattan and the Bronx, raising serious questions over the law-and-order situation in the Big Apple. A former NYPD officer was also hit by a stray bullet.
Bishop was ambushed by the shooter when he walked out of his home, according to neighbors. He was hit in the face, chest and right shoulder. Neighbors heard the man calling for help and running for cover. “I heard him screaming, calling for his mom and running upstairs,” Sarah Santos, a neighbor, told NY Daily News. “I just heard, 'Boom, boom, boom!’ The guy was waiting for him.” She said Bishop was with his family upstairs and the tragedy happened as soon as he opened the door.
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An unconscious Bishop was rushed to Jacobi Medical Center where he succumbed soon. Another neighbor called the slain teen a “good boy”. Refusing to identify himself, the neighbor told the Daily News: “He was a good boy. I looked through my window and he got shot.”
Cops suspect Bishop had links to gang
The neighbors recalled that Bishop was a friendly individual who lived with his mother. “He was quiet, he wouldn’t talk to anybody except to say hi,” Santos said, adding: “He was very young ... It’s sad.”
Police, however, suspect that Bishop had connections to a gang called the 20/30 Group which may have caused his death. He had been arrested 16 times before for charges that include assault and robbery, the Daily News report added. The cops were looking for the shooter who is yet to be identified.
Saturday will go down as a horrific day in the history of the Big Apple. On the same day (April 24) in 2020 when the coronavirus pandemic had also wreaked havoc, one person was shot in the city. In 2019, the number was three while in 2018, it was four.
According to NYPD data, while there were 210 cases of shootings with 238 people injured between January 1 and April 2, 2020, the numbers have gone up to 372 and 410 respectively in the same period this year, marking a 77 percent increase.
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said after a shooting earlier in April that the authorities will “fight back this challenge” and that “the gun violence problem went up and that's not acceptable”. Saturday showed that a lot of work is yet to be accomplished on that front.