Debates about crime statistics and police tactics are easy to handle compared with the question embedded deep in the background of incidents like the death of Andrell Napper: Why?
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Curtis Stephen
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Of course, that does not mean all the victims are in gangs. One day in mid-March, on the ground floor of the High School for Public Service in Crown Heights, a group of 15 students affiliated with an after-school program run by the gun control advocacy group New Yorkers Against Gun Violence rejects—with some heat—the proposition that most of the impact of the city’s gun violence is experienced by the gang-affiliated.
“That’s not true,” says Christy Bhola, a 17-year-old Canarsie resident, who says she joined the program after her mother and brother were robbed at gunpoint on the front steps of their home. “It’s not as if it’s only gangs just killing each other where they go, ‘OK, I’m a gangbanger, and you’re a gangbanger. Let’s do this.’ It doesn’t happen like that. You could be driving your car, and a stray bullet could hit you.” Others describe instances of discovering guns and fleeing bullets during spontaneous shooting incidents. Sharalee Jones quietly explains how the randomness of gun violence struck close to home last September. “My cousin was shot and killed on the street that he lived on, which was a block away from me,” she says. “You just don’t know.”
Even in individual cases, the motive is not always clear. During his one-month hospital stay, Hyde struggled to regain his ability to swallow. He has since recovered physically. But memories of the shooting itself resonate. “It’s terrible dealing with something that you don’t have any control over,” he says. “The recovery was even worse than the shooting.” No arrests have been made, as far as Hyde knows. “From what I was told, somebody in the car was shooting at two different gentlemen on foot, who were across the street from each other,” he says. “None of this was ever in the newspaper, as far as I know. It was just another night.”
