Three teenage boys were arrested Thursday, Dec. 8, and charged with gang assault in the fatal stabbing of a Brooklyn man in South Ozone Park on Wednesday afternoon.
Police from the 106th Precinct in Ozone Park rounded up the three suspects– two of them 15 and one 17-year-old– one day after the incident.
According to police, Justin Shaw, 20, who lived in the Pink Houses NYCHA development in East New York, became involved in an argument with the boys. Shaw was walking with a 20-year-old man on Lefferts Boulevard near the intersection of Rockaway Boulevard just after 3 p.m. when he got into a verbal dispute with the teens over gang affiliation, an NYPD spokeswoman said.
The dispute escalated into a physical confrontation, and the 17-year-old brandished a knife and allegedly plunged it into Shaw’s chest multiple times and stabbed the other man in his right leg. The three assailants fled the location.
EMS responded to the crime scene and rushed the two victims to Jamaica Hospital Medical Center, where the man repeatedly stabbed in the chest was pronounced dead, police said. The second victim was listed in stable condition and is expected to survive, according to authorities.
Detectives from the 106th Precinct interviewed several eyewitnesses at the scene and arrested the three youths based on the provided information, according to the spokeswoman.
The three suspects are charged with gang assault, and the 17-year-old was also charged with criminal possession of a weapon, but not murder; that could change as the homicide investigation remains ongoing.
