Gunshots Alarm Residents on 99th Street, as Shootings Have Risen in the Precinct

A man found a bullet hole in the door to his car. Photos by David Brotsky.

By Renee Roden

Gun violence, which has escalated throughout New York City this summer, was brought home to one Upper West Side block this past Sunday. Residents of the 200 block of West 99th Street were rattled when the evening calm was interrupted by gunshots. It does not appear that anyone was injured by the shots, but residents and visitors later found bullet holes in cars.

There have been 7 shootings with 8 victims in the 24th precinct this year, up from zero shootings at this point last year, according to police stats. Three of the shootings were recorded in 28-day period ending August 9. In another incident on Monday, a 29-year-old man was shot in the shoulder during an attempted robbery on 94th and Amsterdam, police said.

David Brotsky, an attorney, who has lived on the Upper West Side for over a decade, alerted the West Side Rag on Monday morning to the shooting that had occurred on Sunday evening near his apartment on 99th and Amsterdam. “I wasn’t a full eyewitness,” he said. “I was just an earwitness, so to speak.”

But his neighbor, Sean Miller, a brand strategy consultant, was at least a partial eyewitness. Miller phoned in the original 911 call to the police at 7:06 pm on Sunday evening.

Miller told the Rag, “I was sitting at my desk in my home office, which looks over a courtyard. I heard two or three loud shots that sounded very close. I’ve heard a lot of fireworks over the past couple of months, and these were different.” Miller ran to the front of his apartment, overlooking 99th Street, and saw two men “running westbound on the sidewalk on the north side of 99th street, past the church. One of them had a handgun in his left hand, and they were both running down the sidewalk, looking over their shoulders, like they were fleeing something,” Miller said. He described both men as black males wearing black shorts and shirts.

Miller called the police shortly after, and said they responded quickly. “The cops sort of swarmed at 99th and Broadway, and they closed off the street from Amsterdam all the way down the block.”

Miller went out to walk his dog around a half hour later, and an officer escorted him in and out of the crime-scene tape. “Two cars on the street had bullet holes in them,” said Miller. One of the cars, with an out-of-town license plate, was shot in the driver’s window. “Quite a souvenir,” he added.

David Brotsky said he believed the gunshots on 99th Street were indicative of the “the changed tenor of the neighborhood in the past couple of months.”

Sean Miller was reluctant to jump to conclusions to find one single explanation for the uptick in crime some residents have perceived. He said, “It’s strange because I don’t know what’s causing this uptick in car break-ins and gun violence, and some of this stuff. It’s not like the people who moved into the Lucerne twenty blocks away are running around the city rampant with guns and stuff. I just don’t know what’s caused this, some people think that people around are getting more bold, because they perceive that the cops are taking a more laissez-faire attitude toward break-ins and things like that. I don’t know.”

WSR posed the question to Deputy Inspector Naoki Yaguchi, commander of the 24th Precinct. We are awaiting a response. Yaguchi has previously said that at least one of the recent shootings was gang-related.

Miller and his wife are moving with their two children to Connecticut this week, and they are saddened to leave the neighborhood. “It has nothing to do with the things I’m talking about, actually,” he explained. “It’s just the COVID situation and accompanying recession have made it unaffordable for us to stay here.” His wife was laid off from her position earlier this year, and he said his business slowed for a long period, although it is picking back up. “We never thought we would have to leave the city,” he added, “we don’t want to leave this neighborhood.”

“People that are in various states of needing mental health support and are homeless…everyone in our neighborhood has had them as neighbors, and that’s part of living in New York City. But this is the first time that gun violence has come to this block, at least since I’ve lived here.”

But, he says, he and his wife “take a much longer view on the city. “We know that this, too, shall pass.”