Eric Adams has blasted Black Lives Matter activists for failing to act after a series of shootings ripped across New York City in yet another night of bloodshed.
He slammed the group and asked why they were not out condemning the latest violence to erupt in the Bronx and Brooklyn.
The city’s second black mayor pointed out to movement leaders those who were killed or wounded were all black, adding: ‘We can’t be hypocrites.’
Bullets hit at least 15 people and two people were killed as gun violence continued to spiral out of control.
A 23-year-old woman was hit by a stray round as she sat in her car while a 22-year-old man was also killed in a separate attack.
The shootings came less than a day after Frank James allegedly sprayed bullets into a subway in Brooklyn, hitting ten people.
Adams told NY1 with Ruschell Boone on Wednesday: ‘Where are all those who stated ”Black Lives Matter”?
‘Do an analysis of who was killed or shot last night. I was up all night speaking to my commanders in the Bronx, in Brooklyn. The victims were black.’
His comments appeared to be a thinly-veiled attack on progressives who have criticized his policies in recent weeks.
He said those who protested police brutality in 2020 should do the same for the violence currently afflicting the city.
He added: ‘If black lives matter, then the thousand of people I saw on the street when [George] Floyd was murdered should be on the street right now.
‘The lives of these black children that are dying every night matter. We can’t be hypocrites.’
Adams vowed to tackle crime when he took office but it has skyrocketed by almost 50 percent compared to last year, with shootings up 9.3 percent.
Sally Ntim was the 23-year-old bystander shot in the Bronx at around 8:40 pm on Tuesday.
Cops said she had been sitting in her car alone when she was clipped by a stray bullet in the head and passed away at Lincoln Hospital.
Officers said a gunman fired at another – with him possibly returning shots – but no one had been arrested.
Erica Palmer, who said she was a ‘second mom’ to Ntim, told the Daily News: ‘I can’t believe she’s gone. She’s a high school graduate, college kid.
‘She had a future and it was taken away. I helped raise her, she was raised up in my house with my daughters … always laughing, very happy, always joyful, always.’
Ntim’s family had moved to Texas but she stayed behind in the Bronx and had started her own hairstyling business.
A message written on a bright pink poster, added, ‘I really need to hear your laugh one more time.’
Security camera footage showed a hooded thug creeping down a street before loosely firing across the street.
He blasted another shot at his target before the video shows him fleeing back the way he came.
The first killing of the night started when three men left a liquor store around 7:40 pm at E. 180th St. and Mohegan Ave. in Crotona, the Bronx.
They were confronted by three others at the intersection and one of them opened fire on the group.
Wayne Goodwin, 22, took a number of shots to the body and he later died in hospital.
The other two, a 47-year-old and a 21-year-old, were both smashed in the leg but are in stable conditions.
NYPD insiders believe Goodwin was the intended target but they were not clear what sparked the shooting.
Down in Brooklyn, another shooting shocked the city around 4:30 pm when a 43-year-old man was hit in the lower back.
The attack at Gates Ave in Bedford-Stuyvesant also saw a 41-year-old man grazed on his right arm and a 26-year-old man hit in the leg. They are expected to survive.
Around 7 pm, yet another shooting in the Bronx saw a 15-year-old girl hit in the left leg on Laconia Ave. and E. 226th St. in Edenwald. She was in a stable condition.
Just moments later, a man, 41, was also blasted in the leg on Etna St. by Nichols Ave. in Cypress Hills, Brooklyn.
Around an hour and a half after this, a man was shot on E. 86th St. and Flatlands Ave. in Brooklyn.
At 9:50 pm, a 47-year-old man was hit in the head by a bullet on Cruger Ave. by Burke Ave. in Williamsbridge, the Bronx. He was in a critical condition.
And then 20 minutes later found men using three guns to attack three men and a woman near Olinville Ave in Allerton, also the Bronx.
They opened fire and hit Jesse Bynum in the head, killing him, as well as wounding a woman, 33, in the arm, a man, 23, in the leg, and a man, 22, in the back.
The long list of attacks came less than a day after accused Brooklyn subway shooter James allegedly unloaded his gun into a subway car.
Meanwhile this morning an intruder tried to get into an elementary school and stabbed a school safety agent.
The ‘hero’ was rushed to hospital with a gash behind the ear after the attack at Journey Prep School, on Thieriot Avenue in the Bronx. He was stable.
James was holed up in an $87-a-night Philadelphia apartment for a week before the attack that injured ten people, and fled the apartment with the TV blaring.
The 62-year-old is in federal custody awaiting his first court appearance on Thursday on a single charge of committing a terrorist attack on mass transit.
His motive for the attack remains unclear; in YouTube videos posted online for weeks before the attack, he ranted about Mayor Adams, crime, and race in the US.
New York City is being battered by a severe crime wave in recent weeks, with transit attacks spiking 46 percent since last year.
There were 180 crimes reported in March of this year compared to 118 crimes for 2021.
In March alone, the number of crimes in subways jumped 55 percent, from the same period last year, NYPD data shows.
January saw the biggest increase, nearly doubling the year before, with 198 crimes reported compared to 113 in the first month last year.
That same month, Deloitte analyst Michelle Go was pushed to her death under a Times Square train by a homeless man with a history of mental illness.
The suspect Martial Simon, 61, had a violent criminal history, including serving two years for robbing taxi drivers at gunpoint.
After the killing, the newly inaugurated mayor made safety in the subway system a top priority, holding a press conference in the Times Square station in February.
He promised that he would beckon riders back and clear out homeless people who used the commuter system for shelter.
Report from The Daily Mail.
