BELMONT, Bronx (WABC) — A 73-year-old innocent bystander was shot by a stray bullet while she waited for a friend to go vote in the Bronx Tuesday.
It happened just before 4:30 p.m. in the vicinity of Grote Street and Prospect Avenue in the Belmont section, where the woman was struck in the leg while sitting on a concrete block directly in front of the security guard gate for an apartment building.
“All of the sudden, I heard a shot, and I felt this big thing in my leg,” said the victim, who didn’t want her name used. “And I went to the ground and started crawling out of the way of the direction I think it came from.”
She was taken to St. Barnabas Hospital in stable condition, while the gunman fled the scene.
“They told me it was fractured and that I have a hole in the bone,” the victim said. “It was bleeding so much, I put my hand on it to put pressure. Then a gentleman tied my leg up with his shirt, took his white shirt off.”
A couple who lives nearby saw her being loaded into the ambulance.
“The paramedics were already putting her on the stretcher, they were strapping her down,” said one of them, also wishing to remain anonymous. “I was like, ‘Is anything you need me to do for you? Who do we have to contact?”
That couple recovered a bullet fragment from their daughter’s bedroom, with another stray bullet going through their window, leaving a hole. All the gun violence has prompted them to live in fear.
“When I came downstairs yesterday, it was just overwhelming to see how close and how it actually hit the apartment,” one of them said. “If my daughter was any close to the window, she would not be here right now.”
There are no arrests, and the investigation remains ongoing.
Anyone with information is asked to call the NYPD’s Crime Stoppers Hotline at 1-800-577-TIPS (8477) or for Spanish, 1-888-57-PISTA (74782).
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