Five wounded in two 'related' shootings

UPDATED 3:05 p.m. 6/23/11

Five people were shot in two incidents outside of the Fort Independence Houses on Monday.

The first gunshots rang out early Monday morning.  

Police said Armando Rodriguez, 21, told them that he was entering his building at 3340 Bailey Ave. at around 2:10 a.m., when he heard a tire squeak.

Mr. Rodriguez told police that as he turned around, a man fired several shots from a dark-colored four-door sedan. Three of the shots struck Mr. Rodriguez in the abdomen, right arm and left leg. 

Hector Feliziano, 21, who was with Mr. Rodriguez, was hit in the right thigh, police said.

They said Mr. Rodriguez was rushed to New York Presbyterian/The Allen Hospital but Mr. Feliziano fled to his home on Heath Avenue. His mother then brought him to the same hospital.

Police said they had difficulty getting information from the victims.  

“They were kind of uncooperative,” a police source said, adding that Mr. Rodriguez didn’t mention the second victim and police didn’t find out about Mr. Feliziano until nearly two hours after the shooting.  

On Monday afternoon the building’s bullet-scarred windows and a blood-stained sidewalk were harbingers of things to come.

Shots rang out again around 6:30 p.m on Monday, this time near the building’s Fort Independence Street entrance.

Police said two men, ages 17 and 18, and a woman, 20, suffered bullet wounds to both the right and left legs. The female victim was also hit in the right buttocks. All three were taken to St. Barnabas Hospital.

“It has to be related,” a police source said, referring to the dual shootings.

After the first shooting on Monday, an NYPD source said that “there’s a possibility” it was related to an April 26 incident in which bullets were fired into the air in front of the same address.

“It’s still a developing situation,” Capt. Kevin Burke, commander of the 50th Precinct,  said. He added that Five-O officers are prepared in case there is more violence related to the shootings. 

“We always prepare for the worst. These things do flare up from time to time,” he said.  

Hours after the Bailey Avenue shooting, residents sitting in the green space outside the Fort Independence Houses seemed unworried about recent violence.

“You know how it is with kids, they get drinking and somebody says something wrong and it’s like the O.K. Corral,” one resident said.