An 87-year-old woman was hit in the neck by a stray bullet as a Bronx street erupted in gunfire Friday, police and witnesses said.
An 18-year-old man was also shot in the hip when bullets started flying near E. 224th St. and Barnes Ave. in Wakefield about 2:49 p.m. Friday.
Police officers responding to the scene took two teens, one a 15-year-old boy, into custody. Charges were pending.
While detectives believe a stray bullet hit the elderly woman, it was not clear if the gunman was aiming at his 18-year-old victim, cops said.
Multiple witnesses told the Daily News they saw the gunman chasing a man up Barnes Ave. when he opened fire and struck the elderly woman.
“They were chasing him up the block and were letting some shots go. It was four,” said one man, who refused to give his name. “It was an old lady who got hit, up by the parking lot.”
Both victims were taken to Jacobi Medical Center, where they’re expected to survive.
The elderly woman was conscious and talking to first responders as they loaded her into an ambulance, police sources said. While everyone first thought she suffered a graze wound, doctors later discovered that a bullet fragment may have been lodged in her neck and prepared her for surgery.
The violence follows at least two other stray-bullet shootings in the Bronx, which included the killing of a 78-year-old man on April 17.
Edgar Spence, a retired plumber lovingly nicknamed “Pop” and “GP” by his relatives, was shot in the torso while sitting on a bench in a small park behind his building on Alexander Ave. near E. 135th St. in NYCHA’s Mitchel Houses in Mott Haven at about 10:30 p.m. — roughly 10 miles away from where the 87-year-old woman was hit, cops said.
Medics rushed the elderly victim to Lincoln Hospital, but he couldn’t be saved.
There have been no arrests in Spence’s case, cops said.
More recently, 12-year-old Jacob Freytes, the son of a retired NYPD sergeant, was killed on July 25 after he was hit by a stray bullet while riding his bike outside a Bronx bodega.
The gunman, William Ferrer, shot two others near the corner of Eliot Place and Grand Concourse, including a 34-year-old man struck in the left foot and a 25-year-old man hit in the buttocks, cops said. The fatal clash was about five miles from where the 87-year-old was shot, cops said.
Ferrer was quickly arrested and was charged with murder, attempted murder, manslaughter, assault, and weapons possession, and was ordered held without bail at his arraignment.