2 High School Students Injured In Sunday Morning Shooting

MOUNT VERNON, NY — Two teenagers were seriously injured early Sunday morning after being targeted by a shooter who chased after the pair while firing.

The two were reportedly returning home from a party when they were shot at by an unknown gunman. The gun violence broke out just after 1 a.m. near West First St. and South 14th Ave.

One of the students was shot in the leg. The other was not wounded by the gunfire, but broke his leg trying to escape the gunman.

The victims in the attack have been identified as Tommy Guest and his cousin Jarid Collins.

In a discussion livestreamed on social media about what she called an “uptick” in gun violence, Mount Vernon Mayor Shawyn Patterson-Howard expressed concern that people might get the wrong idea about the two students. She made clear the teenagers were not involved in illicit activities that might have caused them to be targeted.

“Far too often, when we hear of young Black men who are involved and who are victims of violent crime in urban communities, we automatically make assumptions that they were involved in some type of negative activity,” Patterson-Howard told viewers. “That they were standing on the corner, that they were doing negative things, and this is just not the case. So I wanted to make sure that I let people know who these young men are and even if they were someone who was standing on the corner, that doesn’t mean that they deserve to get shot. But this is not the case with them.”

The mayor described the injured students as honor roll students and leaders in the Mount Vernon High School community. She confirmed that 18-year-old Guest was shot and his 16-year-old cousin was injured.

“He [Guest] is receiving a full scholarship, a full academic scholarship to Stony Brook,” Patterson-Howard said. “He plays the piano, he plays the flute, he plays the guitar, he draws, he’s very well-rounded. He is a leader, he was the Prom King just a few weeks ago. And then we also have Jarid Collins, who is a rising junior. He’s going into his junior year. He’s also a starter on our Mount Vernon Knights football team.”