AFP, published on Sunday, March 13, 2022 at 5:07 p.m.
New York police have appealed for witnesses to find a man who shot twice Saturday morning at homeless people sleeping on the street, one of whom died, a ‘horrendous’ crime for Mayor Eric Adams .
According to initial investigations, the suspect first fired a gun at a 38-year-old man who was found injured but alive in the early morning hours in Lower Manhattan.
Then, shortly before 5:00 p.m. Saturday (22:00 GMT), in the same neighborhood, the police found another man dead in his sleeping bag, injured in the head and neck. According to CCTV footage, the suspect shot him around 6:00 a.m. while he was sleeping, shortly after the first incident.
“These acts are clear and they are awful,” Democratic Mayor Eric Adams lamented on Saturday evening. “Two people were shot because they were sleeping in the street. They were not committing a crime, they were sleeping in the street”, he denounced.
Eric Adams and police have called on New York’s tens of thousands of homeless people to avoid sleeping rough and join emergency shelters in the city of nearly 9 million people.
New York has a large number of homeless people sleeping in the streets and the Democratic mayor, who took office on January 1, announced a plan in mid-February to dislodge those who settle in the gigantic underground metro network, in particular winter when temperatures frequently drop below 0 degrees Celsius.
This project had been badly received by certain associations, including the Coalition for the Homeless, which had replied that “people settle in the metro because they have no better place to go”.
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