A brawl across from the Franklin K. Lane High School football field ended in gunfire with three students injured and many more fleeing for safety Monday afternoon.
A 16-year-old and a 17-year-old were shot in their right legs, and another 17-year-old was shot in his right arm. They were taken to the Jamaica Hospital Medical Center and are in stable condition. Police are investigating whether the incident was gang related.
According the 75th Precinct, at approximately 3:30 p.m., a fight of more than 10 people erupted on the corner of Elders Lane and Jamaica Avenue, near the Jamaica Deli and Grocery Corp., a popular after-school gathering place for students. Eyewitnesses say shortly after the fight began, gun shots were heard. Three men in a Cadillac Escalade are believed to have pulled up and fired a gun at the crowd. The Escalade then fled the scene.
"I heard seven shots," said deli worker Geemd Saleem, who didnt realize it was gunfire until he saw the melee that ensued. "When I see everybody running and the cops coming with guns, I realized it was a shooting."
Police recovered a nine millimeter hand gun from the scene and also a hunting knife. No arrests have been made, nor were any descriptions of suspects released.
Franklin K. Lane students believed the skirmish was between rival gangs, the Bloods and the Latin Kings. Many students offered different takes on the incident. One student who wished to remain anonymous said his cousin, who had problems with the Latin Kings, was the one who fired the gun from the Escalade. Others said the Latin Kings were feuding with the wrong people. "The people that they were supposed to fight got on the train with us [after school]," said Shantel Hendley.
All agreed that violence was a common occurrence at their high school, referred to as gang territory for the Bloods and Crips, by students.
"The fights are common, but the shooting is not," said Shakia Hendley, an 10th grader at Franklin Lane.
Students say, despite the presence of security guards and police before and after school, fistfights are prevalent inside and outside the schools.
"We have cops up here and this still happens," said Neshelle Pickett, a 10th grader. "The cops are as scared as us."
Students say they are required to go through a metal detector and to show identification and a program sheet listing the classes they take, before entering the school. Yet many said that they easily go into the school without showing any proof and that outsiders could easily get in the building.
Most students came to school Tuesday morning with trepidation, fearing they were not safe from violence. "It makes you not want to come to school in the morning," said Lovasia Makenzie, a 10th grader at the school.
"You look the wrong way, thats how fights start up here," said 10th grader Joshua Moss, whose grandmother, worried over the shooting, wanted him to stay home, but he came anyway to escort his friend Picket.
The latest violence around Franklin K. Lane, which is on the State Education Departments list of Schools in Need of Improvement, has some students considering the transfer option open to those at a failing school, which can be utilized starting in January. But few believe the other schools in the district will be any better. "I know there is going to be a lot of problems in other schools too," said Moss.
School officials would not comment on the shooting. Reporters on school grounds were told they were trespassing and asked to leave.
One student who did not give a name predicted the violence among the gangs to continue, saying tersely, "The beef never stops."
Police said a 25-year-old man in a black SUV was discovered dead with multiple gun shots, within the confines of the 75th Precinct, three hours after the incident near the school, but they do not believe there is a connection between the two.
