NEW YORK: A 17-year-old boy opened fire and wounded three people in New York City’s heavily touristed Times Square early Saturday, the New York Police Department said.
The shooting occurred around 1:20 am (0520 GMT) following a “verbal altercation”, an NYPD spokesperson, cited by AFP, said without giving further details.
An 18-year-old woman’s neck was grazed, while a 19-year-old man and a 65-year-old man’s lower limbs were injured, police said.
None of the injuries was considered to be life-threatening, AFP reported.
The three victims were taken to New York City’s Bellevue Hospital, where they were determined to be in stable condition.
“The perpetrator has been taken into police custody, and a firearm has been recovered,” the NYPD spokesperson added.
The suspect had not been formally charged, according to AFP.
The shooting occurred at 44th Street and Seventh Avenue, an intersection in the middle of the city’s theatre district, which draws tens of thousands of tourists a day.
Earlier this month, the NYPD said shooting incidents and shooting victims in the city were at an all-time low for the first seven months of 2025.
“This isn’t luck. It’s the result of precision policing, relentless effort, and our dedicated officers,” it said in a post on X. “Fewer guns on the street, more lives saved.”
On July 30, a man armed with a semi-automatic rifle gunned down four people, then killed himself as he rampaged through a skyscraper in Manhattan.
There have been 254 mass shootings in the United States this year, including the Manhattan skyscraper incident, according to the Gun Violence Archive — which defines a mass shooting as four or more people shot.
Gunman kills police officer in Atlanta
On Friday, a gunman killed a police officer near the headquarters of the Centers for Disease Control in the US city of Atlanta, authorities said.
No other people were killed or physically wounded in the shooting, during which multiple rounds were fired on the CDC campus, police said.
“Officers arrived — found a critically injured DeKalb County police officer that was down,” Atlanta Police Chief Darin Schierbaum said at a press conference.
The shooter’s identity has not been released.
Schierbaum said it was too early in the investigation to comment on reports by CNN and the New York Times that the gunman blamed the coronavirus vaccine for an unspecified illness he may have had.
The man’s father had reported to authorities earlier Friday that he was suicidal, the reports said.
The shooting began before 5:00 pm local time (2100 GMT) near the CDC campus and a pharmacy, Schierbaum said.
The suspect — who police believe was a single shooter — was found dead on the second floor of a CVS drugstore with a gunshot wound, which may have been self-inflicted.
“The shooter is deceased, and we don’t have any civilians that have been shot in this active shooter incident,” Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens told reporters.
