A man working for West Side Campaign Against Hunger was one of two people shot outside 216 West 64th Street outside the Amsterdam Houses a little after noon on Friday, police told the Daily News.
Pedro Aguilar-Ponce, 41, was making deliveries for the West Side Campaign Against Hunger around 12:20 p.m. at the Amsterdam Houses, a NYCHA development near Lincoln Center, when four men pulled up in a black Chrysler and one opened fire, cops said.
Aguilar-Ponce was walking with a hand truck to make the delivery when he felt pain in his shoulder and arm, his wife told the Daily News. He was taken to Weill Cornell Medical Center, an NYPD spokesperson told us. The other man was shot in the left arm and taken to Mt. Sinai West. Both were listed in stable condition.
“This happened within the confines of the Amsterdam housing development,” Captain Neil Zuber of the 20th Precinct told WSR. “…preliminary information is that they were the intended target. The four perpetrators fled in the vehicle.”
Aguilar-Ponce had worked for West Side Campaign Against Hunger for about a year; the organization was working with a local tenant group to deliver food to needy people.
The assailants remained at large as of Friday night.
Good grief. Drive-by shooting at Amst Houses?! I guess people’s normal business days are so relatively locked down, quiet and restricted that some criminal turf battle over who knows what can play out in broad daylight on a Saturday around people’s homes. Terrible times. This is a development of mostly working families and elderly folks. Thank goodness no more serious injuries and no children hurt.
The illegal economy must be suffering the same stress as the regular economy to manifest like this. And WSCAH is such a needed organization doing such important work for our food-insecure neighbors!
I hope that both victims recover quickly. WSCAH does a lot of much needed work in our community and I hope the tenants’ organization is able to continue working with them. I hate that a group of people intent on causing harm interfered with the delivery of aid to our neighbors who need it. More proof of the enduring scourge of gun violence…
The scourge of gun violence, yes, but those who use guns FOR violence will not likely be the ones surrendering them when and as they are outlawed.
Hey all my defund the police friends, how’s this working for you?
Exactly how could the police have prevented these shootings?
They were never defunded so what’s your point?
Police here were already defunded $1 billion and have less resources to patrol
We do not need to “defund”..We need to ‘Re-allocate” funds and Educate the police..Does anyone remember the days when the “cops” walked our neighborhoods as our “friends”?
Why were they the intended target is the question. Who doesn’t want food delivered to folks who need it?
And please do some research about what the real intention of the poorly chosen phrase Defund the police means.
Gun violence seems to have escalated greatly since Bloomberg left office. Do we have data on that? Every week it seems another mentally ill person is either the perp or the victim of an individual with a gun. How are these guns so easily available? What gives?
Cath, Murder this year is still 15% below that of 10 years ago under Bloomberg. https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/nypd/downloads/pdf/crime_statistics/cs-en-us-city.pdf
Used to walk that way every day, stopped going that route a couple years ago when it became apparent it was not safe. Turn at Lincoln Ctr now.