“I’m scared,” she said. “I’m obviously a mother. You just go out into the street and you get shot.”
On Thursday morning, just steps from the spot where Ms Johnson was killed, Julio Cruz discovered police towing his car. He said officers told him there may still be a bullet in the vehicle from the shooting and that they needed to conduct a search.
“The time they take is the time they take,” said Mr. Cruz, 62. “I hope they find something on this case.”
A single police car guarded the small cordoned off scene, which was next to a playground and a leafy green patch on a hill. There was a dark red streak of blood on the sidewalk.
After a spike early in the pandemic, gunshot rates in New York have started to decline, but remain above their pre-pandemic levels. As of Sunday, there have been 624 shootings in the city this year, compared to 710 for the same period in 2021. That’s down 12 percent, but still about 28 percent more than at the same time in 2019.
Even amid the recent decline, ongoing gun violence – particularly in poor and working-class neighborhoods with many Black and Hispanic populations – has increased the pressure on Mr Adams to act.
Rates of domestic violence in the city have also risen since the pandemic began. The numbers follow a worrying national trend when the early days of Covid forced people to stay at home, a phenomenon some experts suggest made it harder for women to report or escape abusers.
In 2019, the Police Department received 87,512 reports of domestic violence; In 2021 there were 89,032. In the 19th Ward, where the killing took place, rates have fallen slightly over the same period, by about 3 percent. In New York, black and Hispanic residents have historically been disproportionately affected by domestic violence.
Emma G. Fitzsimmons, Sean Piccoli, Matthew Sedacca and Téa Kvetenadze contributed reporting. Kirsten Noyes made a research contribution.
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