Multiple suspects opened fire around 3:30 a.m. at the Taste of the City lounge, located off Franklin Avenue in the Crown Heights neighborhood, NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch confirmed early Sunday morning.
Victims ranged in age from 19 to 61, the commissioner said. The youngest, a 19-year-old male, died at the scene. Two other men, ages 27 and 35, were pronounced dead at nearby hospitals in Brooklyn.
Initially, the commissioner reported a total of 11 people were shot during the overnight violence. At a press conference shortly before 12 p.m., between top NYPD brass and the mayor, Eric Adams confirmed a twelfth person had been hit. He pleaded for anyone with information about the shooting to come forward.
"We need your help. We need your help. If you were inside the club, if you heard individuals talking about of this shooting, if you witness someone fleeing the location, every piece of information will allow us to put the puzzle together to solve this crime," Mayor Adams said.
The shooting began after a dispute at the crowded club, the commissioner said. She said officers recovered at least 42 shell casings from the lounge on Sunday morning, as well as a firearm that was discovered in a nearby street. So far, police investigators have not been able to directly link that gun to the nightclub shooting.
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"What we know preliminarily is that there was a dispute inside the crowded club that led to the shooting. We believe that there were up to four shooters involved in this incident," Tisch said.
No one was in custody as of the 12 p.m. press conference, but the commissioner said the shooting appeared to be gang-related. Sixty-percent of shootings across the city, she added, are linked back to gangs.
Tisch also said some of the victims of the overnight violence were involved in the shooting.
The shooting comes amid a record low year for gun violence in New York City
“I mean, we have the lowest numbers of shooting incidents and shooting victims seven months into the year that we've seen on record in the city of New York," she said. “Something like this is, of course, thank God an anomaly and it's a terrible thing that happened this morning, but we're going to investigate and get to the bottom of what went down.”