An irate 76-year-old man gunned down his 21-year-old neighbor as his victim tried to quell an argument in their Bronx apartment building — one of two harrowing back-to-back shootings in a borough Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said was leading the city in crime reduction this year, relatives and police said Friday.
Victim Justin Chatfield was shot in the chest by his neighbor — who is about 55 years his senior — at about 10:20 p.m. Thursday after he heard an argument in the hallway outside his apartment on Richman Ave. near Sedgwick Ave. in Morris Heights, cops said.
After being shot, Chatfield stumbled back into his apartment, seeking help from his mother, Walter Fields, an attorney and longtime friend of the family told the Daily News.
“Her baby, one of her babies, died in her arms,” Fields said.
EMS rushed Chatfield to St. Barnabas Hospital, but he couldn’t be saved.
To compound the tragedy, Chatfield was expecting to have a child with his longtime girlfriend. The two were high school sweethearts, Fields said.
“He was very close to having a baby. I mean, within months, he should be a new father,” Fields said. “He was looking for work, going to trade schools. He was really trying to become a productive member. Support his family, support his child.”
“(His mother) is in really bad shape,” Fields added. “This is a very young man. His family’s really torn up. He was just turning his life around. This is really a tragedy.”
Responding cops immediately took the neighbor, identified as Gilbert Smalls, into custody
Detectives charged Smalls with murder, manslaughter and weapons possession.
“(It happened) in the hallway,” Chatfield’s grandfather Alan Barnwell told The News. “(His mother) was in the bathroom and she just heard a lot of noise.”
“People was in the hall arguing and (Justin) went out to look and that’s when it happened. He went out to see what was happening,” the grandfather said.
Theodore Parisienne / New York Daily News
Police respond after Justin Chatfield, 21, was fatally shot inside an apartment building on Richman Ave. in the Bronx. (Theodore Parisienne / New York Daily News)
Police sources with knowledge of the case said Chatfield was arguing with the neighbor before the shooting occurred. Fields believes that Chatfield was trying to quell an argument between Smalls and another tenant when he was shot.
“He’s a bubbly peacemaker,” Fields said about Chatfield. “He wasn’t looking to start no trouble. And he definitely wasn’t looking to hurt anybody. Justin was a peacemaker, so he kept peace wherever he went. He was just a young man who wanted to be a father and was looking forward to becoming a father.”
Smalls, Fields said, was “just an angry older man.”
Smalls arraignment in Bronx criminal court was pending Friday.
“He ain’t gonna make it out of (prison),” Barnwell said about the 76-year-old suspect.
About 40 minutes before Chatfield was shot, a 22-year-old man was fatally shot in the head following an argument outside a Bronx bodega.
Ricardo Bygrave was shot outside the deli located on Bronxwood Ave. near E. 217th St. in Williamsbridge around 10:22 p.m., cops said.
Theodore Parisienne / New York Daily News
A 22-year-old man was fatally shot in the head following an argument outside a bodega on Bronxwood Ave. and E. 217th St. in Williamsbridge. (Theodore Parisienne / New York Daily News)
Sources said Bygrave started arguing with his killer and had gotten into a fistfight with the suspect before the gunman pulled out a weapon and fired two shots.
Medics rushed the victim to Jacobi Hospital, where he died.
The shooter, wearing a North Face jacket, black sweatsuit and black sneakers, was last seen fleeing north on Bronxwood Ave. on an e-bike.
No arrests have been made.
The Bronx is the fourth largest borough in the city by population but accounts for about 40% of the city’s murders.
Through Sunday, the Bronx played host to 21 of the city’s 52 murders, as well as a third of the city’s shootings. The city had also logged 132 shootings through Sunday, with 51 of them taking place in the Bronx, officials said.
Through end of March, 21 murders had occurred in the borough, up two from the 19 killings investigated in the same time period in 2025 — a 10% jump, cops said.
During a press conference at police headquarters Thursday, Tisch said that the Bronx was leading the city in crime reduction with a 9% drop in felony crime for the first three months of the year, from 6,950 last year to 6,298 this year.
The reduction was a drop of 650 crimes in the borough for the first quarter of the year, Tisch said.
“Let me repeat that major crime in the Bronx is down more than 9% in the first quarter,” she said proudly. “How did we do that? We identified the communities historically played by violent crime, and employed an unprecedented number of cops to our violence reduction zones.”
“These are the places that have been hardest hit (by crime) and now we are seeing tremendous progress,” Tisch said about the violence reduction zones.
Tisch announced in February that 200 additional officers will be assigned to the Bronx after it is divided into separate North and South borough commands this spring.
Patrol boroughs are commands that oversee local police precinct operations. Manhattan, Queens and Brooklyn have two patrol boroughs, while the Bronx and Staten Island have only had one.
“For too long, the Bronx has experienced more crime per capita than any other borough while operating under a structure that has not kept pace with the demands placed on it,” Tisch said, during her State of the NYPD address.