Crown Heights Shootings: As J'Ouvert Gears Up, 1 Dead, 1 Critical In Pre-Parade Violence

CROWN HEIGHTS, BROOKLYN — One man was killed and another was wounded Sunday night in two separate shootings a few hours and a few blocks apart in northern Crown Heights, just as the neighborhood was gearing up for the annual J'Ouvert street parade the next morning.

The first man was shot and killed around 8:50 p.m. at 50 Herkimer Place, near the busy intersection of Atlantic and Nostrand (on the border of Crown Heights and Bed-Stuy).

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When police arrived to that address on a 911 call Sunday night, they said they found a 49 year-old man "unconscious and unresponsive with a gunshot wound to the head." He was pronounced dead soon after at Kings County Hospital. His identity is being withheld until the NYPD can get a hold of the victim's family.

A second man, 47 years old, was then shot in the chest a few blocks south, at 1373 Sterling Place near Schenectady Avenue, around 11:15 p..m., police said. He was transported to the same hospital in critical condition, according to an NYPD spokesman.

As of early Monday morning, cops hadn't made any arrests in either case, the spokesman said. The investigations were ongoing.

Both shootings happened within a mile or two of the J'Ouvert parade route (which begins at Grand Army Plaza and runs through Prospect Park, Crown Heights and Prospect-Lefferts Gardens). However, there was nothing to indicate that Sunday night's violence had anything to do with J'Ouvert.

For context: There have been six total people shot in the past month in the two NYPD precincts where Sunday night's shootings occurred; none were killed.

The city-sanctioned J'Ouvert parade didn't officially start until 6 a.m. Monday — but as is the case every year, many in Brooklyn began celebrating the night before.

J'Ouvert's organizers often argue that pre-parade activities shouldn't be lumped into the official event. "The parties, the backyard parties, the clubs — that's not our celebration," the parade's president, Yvette Rennie, previously told Patch. "That's not J'Ouvert. That's not our lovely carnival."

The parade rarely goes a year without a deadly shooting in the vicinity. For decades, it's been held in the wee hours before Brooklyn's West Indian Day Parade on Labor Day Weekend, as a tribute to the covert celebrations of Caribbean slaves before Carnival. But this year, in an attempt to prevent more violence, city officials and parade organizers moved its start time from 4 a.m. to 6 a.m., into the daylight.

Officials also announced that NYPD checkpoints would be set up along the parade route, and that cops would refuse to let anyone through who was carrying a large bag, booze or a weapon.

A couple weeks before the 2017 event, NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio said at a press conference:

It’s a very important moment for the Caribbean community, and we respect that, but we are absolutely committed to ensuring that this be an event where everyone is kept safe.

Last year, as everyone knows, we attempted a series of major changes and a tremendous amount more police presence and additional resources, and yet we did not get the result we sought. Lives were lost and that’s unacceptable to all of us.

So, we’re going to have a very different plan for the J’Ouvert celebration this year. There’s going to be even more police presence . There’s going to be a series of changes. In fact, you’re going to see the same kind of measures that we take on New Year’s Eve to create a much more orderly and controlled situation.