The Bobster
Senior News Editor since 2004
Teenage boy shot outside NYC high school, triggering lockdown
A 15-year-old boy was shot outside a Manhattan high school on Tuesday morning, triggering a lockdown, police said.
nypost.com
Teenage boy shot outside NYC high school, triggering lockdown
By
Tina Moore,
Joe Marino,
Jack Morphet and
Steve Janoski
March 14, 2023 11:21am
Updated
A 17-year-old boy was shot at least three times when a fight between a group of teenagers on the Upper West Side exploded Tuesday morning, locking down two nearby high schools and leaving students and neighbors terrified.Witnesses told police that four or five teenage males began arguing near West 70th Street before the dispute moved toward the corner of Amsterdam Avenue and West 68th Street.
That’s when the suspect – an unidentified 19-year-old male who’s out on bail in an armed robbery case – pulled a handgun and shot the victim at about 9:50 a.m., police officials said.
He then chased the victim across the street and shot him twice more in the chest before hailing a cab and fleeing.
The boy ran about two blocks to his school, The Maxine Greene High School for Imaginative Inquiry, police said. Authorities rushed him to the hospital, where he underwent surgery. Police said he was in stable condition.
A teenager was shot outside a Manhattan high school on Tuesday morning, police said.Robert Miller 
Police recovered this handgun at the scene.NYPD [IMG alt="The wounded teenager may have ran into MLK after he was shot, the sources said."]https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/03/NYPICHPDPICT000008240628.jpg?w=1024[/IMG]The wounded teenager may have run into MLK after he was shot, the sources said. Robert Miller
Video shot by a photographer for The Post showed a small fleet of cops and firefighters walking the wounded teen’s gurney down an outside flight of stairs before loading him into an FDNY ambulance.
The school locked down after the shooting, as did nearby LaGuardia High School of Music.
A student the High School for Law, Advocacy and Community Justice, which is in the same building as the Maxine Greene school, told The Post the victim goes by the nickname “Nas” and “is pretty chill.”
“He doesn’t get into trouble in school,” the student said. “He comes in, does what he has to do and leaves. He’s about to graduate.
At an afternoon press conference, Chief of Patrol John Chell said that officers from the NYPD’s 20 precinct caught up with a yellow cab about a block away from the scene that the suspect had hailed in an attempt to flee. They recovered a firearm and took the alleged shooter into custody. His name was not released and he has not yet been charged.
“I must reiterate, without the community’s assistance here this morning, this would have been a harder case to solve,” Chell said. “This is truly New York City working together with our police department to take a shooter off the streets.”
A suspect was taken into custody at MLK High School after the shooting.
Chell said detectives will speak to the victim when he recuperates. They might expect him to fill in details currently unknown to police, such as what the motive for the shooting was and how he knew the triggerman.
The suspect has three prior arrests, Chell said. This includes two narcotics arrests this year and the armed robbery with a firearm charge for which he was indicted in 2021.
Police recovered three shell casings at the scene.
Police arrested the shooter outside 165 West End Avenue, according to a doorman who watched the scene.
[IMG alt="Police said the shooting triggered a lockdown at the high school.
"]https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/03/NYPICHPDPICT000008240139.jpg?w=1024[/IMG]Police said the shooting triggered a lockdown at the high school. Robert Miller [IMG alt="LaGuardia High School was also placed on lockdown, police said.
"]https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/03/NYPICHPDPICT000008240144.jpg?w=1024[/IMG]LaGuardia High School was also placed on lockdown, police said. Robert Miller
“The cab was going downtown,” the doorman said. “There were about five cop cars. They cornered the cab from the back and front. The cops got out with their guns drawn and told the guy to get out. He got out and they arrested him.”
Students and workers at stores on Amsterdam Avenue described the panic they felt after the shots rang out.
“I heard a woman screaming at the top of her lungs, ‘Don’t do it! No, don’t do it!’” one worker said. “Seconds later, there were three shots. I looked out the window and construction workers on the scaffolding” above the local bakery Boule & Cherie “all ducked. I locked the door and hid.”
“I’m kind of scared, honestly,” said Tristan Hinds, a 15-year-old student at LaGuardia. “Gun violence is really ramping up around here.”Mayor Eric Adams went to the Upper West Side neighborhood following the shooting Tuesday morning but left without answering questions.
The shooting came after a 15-year-old boy was stabbed in the chest and injured during a dispute at a South Jamaica High School in Queens on Monday afternoon.
The Big Apple has been plagued by a rash of violence near schools in recent weeks.
On March 7, 21-year-old Ousmane Diallo was charged with shooting two teenagers outside PS 371 Lillian L. Rashkis High School in Sunset Park.
Just one day earlier, a 15-year-old boy was shot in the back near Park West High School in Manhattan’s Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood.
Also on March 6, a 47-year-old man was shot twice outside PS 678 East New York Middle School of Excellence, according to police.
