A 15-year-old boy was killed and a 57-year-old man was wounded when a gunman opened fire outside of a Harlem apartment building Wednesday, police said.
The two victims were on W. 115th St. near Lenox Ave. inside NYCHA’s King Towers at about 6:20 p.m. when the shooting began, cops said.
The teen was shot in the stomach, cops said. The older victim was hit in the right hand.
Area cops were alerted to the shooting by ShotSpotter, a system of highly sensitive microphones positioned in the area designed to detect gunfire. When they arrived, they found the two gunshot victims.
Medics rushed both victims to Mount Sinai Morningside, where the teen died. His name was not immediately released as cops tracked his relatives down. The 57-year-old man was treated for a minor wound.
Cops grabbed a person of interest at the scene and brought him in for questioning. Criminal charges were not immediately filed.
The double shooting comes as the NYPD celebrated a historic low in shootings this year.
The 594 gunshot victims are down from the previous low of 694 people shot during the same time frame last year and in 2018 — and is the lowest since the NYPD created its current crime-tracking system, Compstat, in 1994.
In another all-time low, murders are also down in the city so far this year, at 203, beating the previous record of 215 set in 2017, Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said at a One Police Plaza press conference on Tuesday, adding that murders in public housing had dropped 33% this year, from 24 this time last year to 16.
The NYPD has also removed 4,100 guns from New York City streets, with about a quarter of them — 1,003 — seized in Manhattan, officials said.