Violence Mars Holiday As Five Are Killed

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The New York Sun

Police are investigating a string of attacks on Christmas Eve that spilled into the early hours of Christmas Day, including a double homicide in the Clinton Hill section of Brooklyn in which two teenagers were killed.

Before 4 a.m. on Christmas Day, five people had been shot to death and another six were wounded by gunshots, police officials said.

Robert Grant, 19, and Oliver Maitland, 16, who neighbors said grew up across the street from each other, were shot and killed at about 9:45 p.m. on Christmas Eve in Clinton Hill, police said.

The teenagers had left the home of Grant’s mother, Michele Grant, at 89 Lefferts Place, on their way to a local convenience store, several neighbors said. They had walked about a block when they were approached by a gunman, police said. The suspect shot both victims once in the head, police said. Maitland was also shot at least once in the stomach.

A friend of Ms. Grant who lives in the same apartment building, Angela Gore, said she heard the shots and rushed outside. She found the bodies of the two teenagers, both of whom she said she recognized right away, and hurried back to her building to tell Ms. Grant.

“I felt so bad for her,” Ms. Gore said. “He was her only child.”

Hearing the news, Ms. Grant rushed out of her apartment building to find her son, several neighbors said. As police arrived and set up a crime scene perimeter in front of 121 Lefferts Place, Ms. Grant looked on, sobbing, kept from her son’s body by yellow police tape, several neighbors said. Residents in Clinton Hill said the victims were longtime friends. Grant met Maitland while he was living across the street at 70 Lefferts Place, an Italianate villa-style residence that was designated a landmark by the city in 2006. It appears that Maitland moved from Clinton Hill in 2006. Elizabeth Maitland, who shares an address in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn with Maitland, sold the building in 2006, according PropertyShark.com.

Ms. Maitland was not available for comment yesterday.

Neighbors who said they knew the two victims described them as unassuming young men who did not cause trouble. “He was a quiet kid,” a neighbor, Lisa Abraham, 17, said of Grant. “That’s why nobody really knew him.”

But one neighbor who lives steps from the scene of the shooting, Lenora Morris, said the victims had been robbing people in the neighborhood. Grant had once been arrested for criminal trespassing, police sources said.

The violence on Christmas Eve began at around 1 a.m., when police responded to a shooting in the Bronx that left one man dead and another injured, police said.

The dead man, a 22-year-old who was not identified, was shot once in the back, police said. He was pronounced dead at St. Barnabas Hospital. The other victim, an unidentified 17-year-old male, was in stable condition after being shot once in the stomach, police said. The shooting occurred after a fight broke out outside a Sweet 16 party, Newsday reported.

Later on Christmas Eve, at about 10:15 p.m., police responded to another homicide in the Bronx.

As Orlando Clarke, 26, pulled a 2003 Nissan sedan into a driveway at 3239 Fenton Ave. in Eastchester, a suspect fired six shots into his windshield, police said. Clarke was rushed to Jacobi Hospital, where he was pronounced dead, police said.

The fifth Christmas Eve homicide occurred in the East New York section of Brooklyn at about 10 p.m., police said.

The male victim, who was not identified, was found in front of 1266 Sutter Ave. with one gunshot wound to the head, police said. He was pronounced dead at Brookdale Hospital, police said.

Police are investigating another shooting in the Bronx that left a victim in critical condition, police said.

The victim, who was not identified, was shot in the stomach after a confrontation with four masked suspects inside a lobby at Co-op City, police said.

The last shootings occurred at about 3:45 a.m. on Christmas Day, when gunfire broke out on the street outside a nightclub, Club Sea Breeze, in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, police said.

Four victims, all under the age of 21, who investigators believe were not the intended targets, were each shot once in the leg during the incident, police said.


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