Jihad Pack: Teenager killed and bystander injured in Harlem shooting

A 15-year-old boy has been shot dead and a 57-year-old bystander injured after a gunman opened fire outside a public housing complex in Harlem.

The shooting happened at around 6:20 pm on Wednesday outside the Martin Luther King Jr. Towers on West 115th Street, near Malcolm X Boulevard. Police officers rushed to the scene after ShotSpotter, the city's acoustic gunfire detection system, flagged at least seven shots being fired.

The teenage victim, identified by police as Jihad Pack, lived in the estate. He was shot in the stomach under a long stretch of construction scaffolding. Witnesses and police said the mortally wounded boy tried to drag himself back to his building but collapsed on the walkway just steps from his home. He was taken to Mount Sinai Morningside hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

"He was just a baby and he was loved... terribly loved," an unnamed family member said on Wednesday night.

The second victim, a 57-year-old man, was sitting nearby in a plastic chair, smoking a cigar, when the shooting started. He was shot in the right hand.

His 79-year-old father, Clarence Gaines, was inside his apartment when he heard the gunfire and ran downstairs.

"He called out, 'Daddy! I've been shot!'" Mr Gaines said. "I'm grateful they didn't get my son in the body. It's terribly sad about that little boy. He never got a chance to live his life."

The older victim was taken to hospital in a stable condition to be treated for what police described as a minor wound.

Officers detained a person of interest at the scene for questioning, but police have not yet announced any criminal charges or suggested a motive for the attack. It remains unclear whether either of the victims was the gunman's intended target.

The shooting happened against a backdrop of falling gun crime across New York City. Just a day earlier, Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch announced that murders and shootings across the city had fallen to historic lows.

Public housing complexes have seen a particularly sharp drop in lethal violence. According to police department data, homicides in New York City Housing Authority developments fell by 33 per cent this year, dropping from 24 by this time last year to 16.

The department also reported that officers have taken more than 4,100 illegal firearms off the streets this year. Roughly a quarter of those weapons — more than 1,000 guns — were confiscated within Manhattan.

Yet for the residents of the King Towers estate, those numbers offer little comfort. Under the scaffolding that runs across three separate buildings, a pool of blood still marked the spot near the plastic chair where the older man had been sitting when the gunman started firing from east to west.

Police investigators remained at the scene late into Wednesday night, searching for bullet casings and interviewing witnesses.