Bronx District Attorney Darcel D. Clark announced on Thursday, July 21, that the New York State Court of Appeals affirmed on Thursday the conviction of Darrell Hemphill for the fatal shooting of 2-year-old David Pacheco on Easter Sunday, 2006.

 

 

The case is somewhat reminiscent of the shooting earlier this year of then 11-month-old Baby Catherine, who, as reported, was shot in the cheek as she sat with her mother in their car at East 198th Street and Valentine Avenue in the Bedford Park section of The Bronx on January 19, while the baby’s father paid a brief visit to a pharmacy.

 

Baby Catherine was rushed to hospital and following multiple medical procedures, survived the shooting. Some months later, she was discharged. The shooter is still sought by police, who issued a reward for information in relation to the incident amid a renewed appeal in May.

 

As of July 17, year-to-date murders in the 52nd precinct are up 350 percent (9) versus the same period last year (2). An 18-year-old male youth was arrested on murder charges following the fatal stabbing of a 35-year-old man in Norwood on July 21, as reported. This latest incident is not yet included in the year-to-date murder statistics for the 52nd precinct.

 

Meanwhile, year-to-date shooting incidents are up 11.1 percent (20) versus the same period last year (18) while year-to-date shooting victim numbers are down 4.2 percent (23) compared to the same period last year (24).

 

On July 20, Mayor Eric Adams held a roundtable at Gracie Mansion as part of the 2022 Mayors Against Illegal Guns Summit. Over 15 mayors participated from across the country, along with representatives from “Everytown for Gun Safety,” the largest group of gun violence prevention advocates in the country.

 

Adams said mayors were on the front lines of the gun violence crisis facing America and know that help must come from every arm of government. “That includes the new, recently appointed head of ATF (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms) who will be visiting our city, but it also includes our state houses and our local city council chambers,” said the mayor.

 

“It’s a collaboration of prosecutors, of judges in every arm of the criminal justice system to deal with some of the immediate issues we’re facing, but also to prevent some of the long-term impacts that are causing some of the violence and causing young people, in particular, to continue to participate in violence,” Adams said. “We believe there are several dams that we must build; one, social media, another hidden hand that is fueling much of the retaliatory violence and even some of the initial actions.”

 

The mayor said the $9 billion gun manufacturing industry, which he said profits over public safety has remained removed from questions pertaining to gun safety. “They’re no different than the cigarette manufacturers of yesteryears who stated year after year, knowing their product produced a dangerous outcome, continued to lie and hide behind the facts,” he said. “We are not going to allow that to happen anymore.”

 

The mayor added that a third factor was sharing information. “The transparency of data and information is something that we are agreeing on, and we’re going to use our local municipalities to share the information of how a gun is born and how it dies, and how people die in between,” he said. “That sharing of information has been lost throughout the years. The presentation we received today from the local ATF SAC, special agent in charge, is a starting point for us and we are going to go back through AMAA and also through the United States Conference of Mayors to talk about how do we continue that sharing of information.”

 

Anyone with information regarding Baby Catherine’s shooting is asked to call the NYPD’s Crime Stoppers Hotline at 1-800-577-TIPS (8477) or for Spanish, 1-888-57-PISTA (74782). The public can also submit their tips by logging onto the CrimeStoppers website at https://crimestoppers.nypdonline.org/ or on Twitter @NYPDTips.

 

All calls are strictly confidential.