Day: May 19, 2025

Another double shooting rocked Brooklyn on Sunday night as two people, including a teenager, were shot in a Cypress Hills park.

The outburst of gun violence was the borough’s third shooting involving two victims during the weekend.

Officers from the 75th Precinct rushed to Highland Park, off the corner of Jamaica Avenue and Elton Street, just after 9:30 p.m. on May 18 after receiving calls about the incident.

Upon arrival, cops found two victims: an 18-year-old man shot in the right forearm and a 15-year-old boy shot in the left thigh.

Paramedics rushed both victims to Brookdale University Hospital, where they were listed in stable condition.

Cops combed the crime scene for evidence. So far, no arrests have been made in the case.

Just 24 hours earlier, the 75th Precinct saw a double shooting in neighboring East New York that left an 18-year-old man dead and a woman seriously wounded.

Police said Zanir Childs, 18, had been shot in the chest across the way from a playground on New Jersey Avenue. He was pronounced dead a short time later at a local hospital. A second victim in the shooting, an 18-year-old woman, was hospitalized after taking a bullet to her right leg.

So far this year, overall crime is down more than 16% in the 75th Precinct, according to the latest NYPD statistics. But murder is up 25% in the precinct, and while the number of shootings has declined slightly since last year — with 15 shootings reported as of May 18, compared to 18 during the same period in 2024 — the number of people injured in those shootings has risen from 19 to 21. 

Detectives are also looking into a double shooting on a basketball court in Crown Heights on Friday afternoon that left two men wounded.

No arrests have been made in any of the incidents, police said.

Anyone with information regarding the gun violence can call Crime Stoppers at 800-577-TIPS (for Spanish, dial 888-57-PISTA). You can also submit tips online at crimestoppers.nypdonline.org, or on X (formerly Twitter) @NYPDTips. All calls and messages are kept confidential. 

This story first appeared on Brooklyn Paper’s sister site amNewYork. 

More than 28,000 people participated in the 44th annual Brooklyn Half Marathon on May 17, a race beset by grueling conditions that claimed one runners’ life. 

When the first wave started the race in Prospect Park at 7 a.m., the temperature was already 66 degrees Fahrenheit with 90% humidity, according to Weather Underground, and temps only rose as the day wore on.

Charles Rogers, a 31-year-old Manhattan resident, suffered cardiac arrest and collapsed on Ocean Parkway near Mile 8. He was rushed to Maimonides Medical Center, but couldn’t be saved. In 2022, another Manhattanite, 32-year-old David Reichman, collapsed and died after crossing the Brooklyn Half finish line. 

“After the race, I found out what had happened, and it hits home,” said Robert Denker, a longtime runner who participated in Saturday’s race at age 81. “…you never know. You feel the least bit of discomfort, a lot of people say you want to push forward, but you really shouldn’t.”

A GoFundMe started to help support Rogers’ wife, Sydney, had raised more than $26,000 by May 19, just two days after his passing.

Runners come together to face a tough race

“The conditions were certainly not working in our favor,” said one runner, Deena Mikhail. “Between the heat, humidity, the unexpected sun that came out.” 

But, she said, the challenging conditions ended up being a “testament to the running community.”

“Everybody — strangers, right? — rallied around each other,” she said. “The spectators were phenomenal.”

When Mikhail, who was racing alongside a few friends from her Jersey City-based run club, started to struggle and said she felt lightheaded, a woman running in front of her turned around and asked if she had taken any salt tabs to get some electrolytes.

“She was like, ‘Do you need salt? You should take salt right now,’” Mikhail recalled. “Thanks to her I took the salt pills … it certainly helped the situation.”

She paid it forward toward the end of the race in Coney Island, when she saw another woman struggling with cramps after running almost 13.1 miles. Mikhail stopped and gave the woman a leftover salt tab — and stayed until she was able to start walking on her own again.

“Those two instances in particular solidify how the running community really do stick together,” she said. 

It was Mikhail’s first Brooklyn Half, but probably not her last — despite the heat and struggle.

“Of course, running onto Coney Island’s boardwalk, and looking up, and seeing the big tower, and the Cyclone and everything, it was pretty cool. It’s certainly a once-in-a-lifetime experience” she said. “Having the volunteers medal you on that boardwalk was an iconic experience as well. It was worth the fight for 13.1 to have that experience. That’s going to stay with me for quite some time.”

Mina Verzosa, a member of Just Us Running Club who was running her fourth Brooklyn Half Marathon, also said the humidity was hard to contend with. But she was well trained, she said, as she’s in the midst of preparing to run in the Rio de Janeiro Marathon next month.

Verzosa, 45, has been running since 2018. That year, she said, her doctor told her to choose one active hobby and stick with it — and she decided to try running.

“Actually, 10 years before, I became a member of NYRR, and I did the one mile [race] on Fifth Avenue,” she laughes. “And I said that ‘I don’t want to run.’”

But when she re-joined the club, she went all in on training and finished her first full marathon in 2019. Since then, Verzosa run plenty of NYRR races, including half and full marathons.

“This is a good sport,” she said. “I know a lot of people don’t run, it’s never too late to start.”

A lot of members of JURC started “late in life,” Verzosa said, and that hasn’t stopped them from running some of the most prestigious races in the world. 

“We want to keep running until we get really, really old,” she joked. “Until we can’t run anymore. It’s inspiring to see a lot of us still be able to run, and also for other people who are in their 70s and 80s who are still running.” 

Denker is among those 80-somethings still running. A member of NYRR since the 70s, he’s run more than 80 races over the years, and finished fourth in his age group in this year’s Brooklyn Half Marathon, with a time of just over three hours.

He ran the first part of the course alongside his daughter, but started to feel the heat after a few miles.

“After that, the humidity was brutal, and the sun was coming down, and it was pretty hot,” he said. “Around mile five, five to six, I really slowed down a lot. And that’s very unusual for me.”

Many of the runners around Denker were struggling with the heat too, he said. But he persevered, and finished fourth in his age group. He was a little disappointed, he had hoped to finish in under three hours — but appreciated that the runners who finished in first and second “had some incredible times.”

Denker said he announces that every marathon was his last, but might still return to the Brooklyn Half Marathon – if he can get in. 

“I’m lucky I’ve been able to get in,” he said. “I intend to, I intend to train. We’ll see what happens, I have to make up for this year.”