Two men were shot and wounded as a shooting erupted inside a Bronx lounge early Saturday — continuing this year’s troubling trend of bloody violence erupting at city night spots.
Patrons at the G&S Restaurant and Lounge on White Plains Road near Nereid Ave. in Wakefield were sent scrambling when shots were fired inside the nightspot at about 4:50 a.m., cops said.
When police arrived, they found a 38-year-old man with gunshot wounds to his chest, left arm, and left leg, officials said.
EMS rushed the victim to St. Barnabas Hospital, where he’s expected to survive.
At about the same time, a 28-year-old man showed up at Montefiore Medical Center with a gunshot wound to the chest. He was also treated and expected to survive.
Detectives later determined that the second victim was also at G&S Restaurant and Lounge.
Cops on Saturday were questioning a person of interest they grabbed at the scene, but a source with knowledge of the case said the man in custody may not have been involved in the shooting.
No arrests have been made. It was not immediately clear what sparked the shooting.
G&S is a Jamaican and Caribbean restaurant that hosts a “Keep Up Fridays” event every week with music and DJs. The nightspot was also having a “Night Called Reckless” event when the shooting broke out, according to the restaurant’s Instagram page.
There have been at least five shootings inside city nightclubs and lounges this year that have left eight people wounded and two people dead. A sixth incident left a man stabbed, cops said.
The incidents have all happened in the Bronx, Brooklyn, and Queens.
Last Sunday, two men and two women were shot and wounded when gunfire erupted inside Richard’s Restaurant and Bar on Avenue L near E. 94th St. in Canarsie about 5 a.m., police said. No arrests have been made.
On March 7, a shooting inside the El Catracho sports bar in Hollis, Queens, took the life of Denis Nunez, who was celebrating with his brother inside the Jamaica Ave. nightspot when a fight broke out at around 1:45 a.m., cops said.
Nunez had just stepped out of the bar when someone from inside opened fire, hitting him in the stomach and left shoulder.
“I don’t really know what happened because I was inside,” Nunez’s brother, who wished not to be named, told the Daily News just after the shooting. “He was outside already and somebody shoot him from inside the bar to outside.”
“I tried to carry (him) to the hospital. That’s why a lot of blood on me,” he recalled, his brother’s blood still on his shirt. “I stopped because I saw the ambulance come. Then they took him from there and they (didn’t) let me go with him to the hospital.”
EMS rushed Nunez to Jamaica Hospital, but he could not be saved.
Last week, NYPD detectives identified 21-year-old Paublo Torres as the shooter. Torres remained on the loose Saturday.
Two shootings in which three people were wounded as well as a stabbing occurred within a three-hour span on Feb. 14, cops said.
During one of the shootings, Sheriff Shittu, a 30-year-old aspiring fashion designer, was fatally shot in the head following a tussle with a drunk patron who had groped his girlfriend earlier in the night. At one point before the shooting, the two also argued over the line for the bathroom.
The gunman opened fire as staffers tried to escort him out of the Quilox Restaurant and Lounge in East Flatbush around 4:25 a.m. that Saturday, cops said.
Sheriff’s killer ran off and remained at large Saturday.
Nightclub gunplay made up about 5% of the 98 shootings that have erupted in the city as of last Sunday, officials said.
City shootings remain down for the year, but not by much. This time last year there were 100 shootings, according to NYPD statistics.
Murders in the city have fallen by more than 40% this year, from 61 this time last year to 36, officials said.