Elected officials and community members gathered in Hollis Hills Friday morning to denounce gun violence and call for community action after a 16-year-old teen was shot in the chest during an incident in the neighborhood earlier in the week.
Police say the teenage victim was roughhousing with a group of boys near a bus stop at the intersection of Springfield Boulevard and Union Turnpike on Tuesday, Oct. 7, when a suspect fired a shot that struck him in the chest.
The victim was rushed to Cohen Children’s Medical Center and is now in stable condition, according to reports.
Officers from the 111th Precinct have since apprehended a 16-year-old suspect, elected officials said Friday morning.
The shooting follows an incident at Benjamin Cardozo High School in Bayside last month, when a 16-year-old student was charged with gun possession and making terroristic threats for threatening to “shoot the school up” on social media and bringing a loaded gun onto the school grounds.
Council Member Linda Lee, State Sen. John Liu and Assemblymember David Weprin joined School District 26 parents and officers from the 111th Precinct at the site of Tuesday’s shooting to denounce gun violence and call for a holistic approach that aims to address violence in or around schools.
“It’s going to take a village,” Lee said on Friday, calling for more supportive services in schools to ensure that youths are educated on the dangers of gun violence.
Liu added that such services can help authorities understand the “root causes” of why young students feel the need to have a gun.
He believes that emotional learning initiatives in schools can be part of the overall solution to gun violence.
Liu said the entire community must come together to address the issue of gun violence in New York schools.
“Everybody is accountable and everybody has a role to play in minimizing this violence,” Liu said.
Weprin, meanwhile, said awareness must start by educating parents about gun violence and the importance of monitoring the online activity of their children.
“There’s no question that in today’s day and age, parents aren’t always aware of the online activity of their children, and we really have to do something,” Weprin said.
Lee praised the FBI for flagging social media activity that indicated a threat at Benjamin Cardozo High School and alerting local law enforcement.
Both Liu and Weprin stated that the New York state legislature has introduced a slew of gun control legislation to address gun violence in the state, but called on the federal government to pass more rigorous gun control measures to prevent further violence.
“We can’t stop guns from being acquired in other states, and then being driven into New York,” Liu said. “The federal government needs to take gun control seriously.”
He called on the federal government to see the “impact of its inaction” by observing the recent incidents in Queens.
“We need them to see what took place early this week, right here in this very quiet corner with lots of school kids during the day,” Liu said.
Adriana Aviles, president of the School District 26 Presidents’ Council, said schools in the district have taken “great strides” to ensure that every student in the district has the tools they need to graduate. Aviles, however, said children cannot succeed if they are not safe at school.
“Families need to be reassured that our children will be safe, not only within our school buildings, but as they travel back and forth to receive their education,” Aviles said Friday.
Aviles alleged that many parents are pulling their children out of the public school system because they do not trust the system to keep them safe at present.
Aviles also called on the Mayor’s office to engage in an “open dialogue” with the school community.
