By Gus Saltonstall
Multiple gunshots were fired after a fight broke out Friday morning on the Upper West Side, according to police and eyewitnesses.
A New York Police Department spokesperson told West Side Rag that a verbal dispute turned physical between three men around 8:45 a.m. near Central Park West and West 71st Street. In the fight, two men approached the other man, and the latter fired off three gunshots, police said.
None of the shots landed, though, and a person of interest was taken into custody, NYPD added.
A man, who wished to remain anonymous, told the Rag in a phone call on Friday that he was in the park at the time and heard the gunshots. He then spoke to a woman who saw the situation unfold and threw herself over the stone wall separating Central Park West from the park to protect herself.
She told him that she saw what appeared to be two construction workers confront a man on a bench on the park side of Central Park West and West 71st Street, which turned into a fist fight. The man then pulled out a “revolver” and fired shots, which caused everyone to scatter, he said the eyewitness told him.
West Side Rag could see blood Friday morning near the Central Park bench.
Both the area around the bench and West 71st Street, between Columbus and Central Park West, were closed off by police around 10 a.m. on Friday.
This is a developing story, please check back in for updates.
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City safest it’s been in decades. Gun crime at all time low.
Whoa. I hope the construction workers are ok.
And yet ANOTHER incident on the “periphery” of the UWS (i.e., RSD or CPW), where it seems the vast majority of these types of incidents (robberies, shootings, etc.) are occurring. Clearly, the NYPD, and specifically the 20th Precinct, needs to start monitoring the two peripheries of the neighborhood more actively and consistently.
If you feel somewhat helpless to change anything these days, please consider…giving blood.