Kathy Mendez did not think twice on Sunday when her teenage son, Kleimer, asked if he could go play basketball near their home in Brooklyn’s Cypress Hills neighborhood.
The sun was still shining and it was a sweltering summer day. So Ms. Mendez, who had just returned from her job at a hair salon, gave Kleimer, 16, her blessing.
Less than an hour later, Kleimer lay dead on the sidewalk about a half-mile from his home, the victim of a drive-by shooting that also killed a second teenager, Antonio Villa, 18, and wounded a third.
The shooting was one of 15 to take place on an exceptionally deadly day in New York City: Seven people were fatally shot and one was stabbed to death on Sunday, a brutal 24 hours that came as New York City has wrestled with a spike in violence unlike anything it has seen in decades.
The trend has not shown signs of slowing, even though for weeks the police, community leaders and elected officials have vowed to confront the rising tide of violence.
“When we have a day with 15 shootings in New York City, that’s not a success,” Police Commissioner Dermot F. Shea said Monday in an interview on NY1. “There’s no other way to put that.”
Through July 26, the city had recorded 745 shootings, an increase of 73 percent from last year, when there were 431 in the same time period, the police said.
Homicides rose by 29 percent, up to 227 from 176 last year. The victims included a 1-year old boy, Davell Gardner Jr., who was fatally shot when gunmen attacked people at a late-night cookout in Brooklyn on July 12.
The surge in New York City has been part of a larger trend of shootings in large American cities. The spike has since become entangled in a fractious debate over the future of policing, which was sparked by the killing of George Floyd in May while in police custody in Minneapolis.
In New York, gun violence typically does increase in the summer months, when warmer weather lures more people outside and tempers are rankled by sweltering temperatures.
But experts have said the violence has been especially brutal this year as the coronavirus pandemic has exacerbated the socioeconomic problems that often contribute to gun violence.
Senior police officials and Mayor Bill de Blasio have also blamed the spike in shootings on a slowdown in the court system caused by the pandemic.
On Monday, Mr. de Blasio again called for the courts to fully reopen as soon as possible. He said the city had seen a “huge backlog” of cases, with only half of firearms charges reaching the indictment stage.
“We can solve our problems,” Mr. de Blasio said at a news briefing on Monday. “We have the ability to do it, but everyone has to come to the table.”
Lucian Chalfen, a spokesman for the state Office of Court Administration, disputed the mayor’s contention that the courts were to blame for the rise in shootings, noting the courts were working to resume full operations.
Commissioner Shea, joining Mr. de Blasio, said that the Police Department was sending resources to areas of the city that had seen outbursts of gang violence. More than half of Sunday’s shootings took place in Brooklyn, he said.
Earlier on Monday, in his NY1 interview, Mr. Shea said the Police Department had been taxed by both the rise in gun violence and continued protests against systemic racism and police brutality that have filled city streets this summer.
Over the weekend, the protests again brought hundreds of people to the streets in Brooklyn and Manhattan, many of them marching to support demonstrators facing off against federal law enforcement officers in Portland, Oregon.
“Every available resource is being used to quell this gun violence,” Mr. Shea said on Monday. “But there’s a lot of balls up in the air that we’re balancing.”
In Cypress Hills on Monday, neighbors gathered to pay tribute to Mr. Mendez and Mr. Villa at the site of the shooting, placing candles and writing their condolences on a poster set up on the sidewalk.
“I’m scared for my kids’ safety every day,” Maxine Rodriguez, 39, who helped set up the memorial, said. “It’s hard to come out of the house and see the kids that your kids hang out with passed away.”
That afternoon, Ms. Mendez, escorted by friends and relatives, came to the spot where her son had died and broke into tears
The police said the two teenagers and the third victim, identified by his mother as Leswin Campbell, 17, had been playing basketball at the George Walker Jr. Park in Cypress Hills before the shooting took place on Sunday.
At around 6:40 p.m., the three young men were standing on a sidewalk when a gunman fired out of the moon roof of a sport utility vehicle and sped away. Detectives said they believed that the gunman had gotten into an argument with at least one of the victims before the shooting.
Both Mr. Mendez, whose nickname was “Curvy,” and Mr. Villa, who friends called “Tone,” were shot in the head. Mr. Mendez was pronounced dead at the scene. Mr. Villa died on Monday at a hospital, the police said. Mr. Campbell was hit in the leg. His mother, Nicola, said that he underwent five hours of surgery.
Ms. Mendez declined to speak with reporters on Monday, and her employer, Roma Lopez, said that the mother was devastated.
“She has no words,” Ms. Lopez said.
Ms. Lopez, who has known Mr. Mendez since he was born, described him as a kind and reserved boy who was not known for causing trouble. He was an obedient child who loved playing basketball and often babysat his two younger brothers.
Mr. Mendez often confided in his mother, Ms. Lopez said. “She did not know of any problems,” Ms. Lopez said. “We don’t even think that bullet was intended for him.”
The violence on Sunday began shortly after midnight on Staten Island, where Grashino Yancy, 32, was shot in his right leg, the police said. Mr. Yancy was taken to the hospital but the wound was fatal.
Less than an hour later, the police were called to an apartment building in the Bronx, where they found Kemar Soloman, 32, stabbed to death in a third-floor hallway.
More violence would come in the Bronx before sunrise. At around 3 a.m., the police found a man, 37, who has not been identified, fatally shot in the head in the Allerton neighborhood.
Then, at about 5:42 a.m., officers responding to a reported assault in the Bronx’s Belmont section discovered two men, 24 and 20, had been shot. The older man, Juancarlos Ortega, was hit in the head and died, while the younger man, shot in the groin, was in stable condition.
The police arrested Joam Casado, 39, and charged him with murder and weapon possession in the attack, officials said.
The afternoon brought a fifth homicide, this one in Queens. Just before 2:15 p.m., Shaka Ifill, 40, was shot in the back in a house in the Woodhaven neighborhood. Mr. Ifill, a Bronx resident, was taken to the hospital and succumbed to his injury four hours later, officials said.
Less than an hour after the shooting that killed Mr. Mendez and Mr. Villa, the police were called to an apartment building in Brooklyn’s Flatbush neighborhood, where they found a man, 32, outside who had been fatally shot in the face and the chest, officials said. The man has not yet been identified.
William K. Rashbaum, Sean Piccoli, Alan Feuer and Emma G. Fitzsimmons contributed reporting.
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