Editor’s Note: The latest edition of the Norwood News is out now, and its our annual Year in Review issue–a recap of the biggest stories that took place in 2011, in the Bronx and beyond. Over the next week or so, we’ll be rolling these top stories out here on Breaking Bronx. Enjoy, and a happy and healthy New Year to all of our readers!

At a community meeting near Fordham Hill in November, Inspector Joseph Dowling told the crowd that a recent uptick in random

neighborhood violence, which had claimed the life of a 59-year-old father and badly-injured a 4-year-old boy, did not tell the whole story of violent crime in the 52nd Precinct.

It may not tell the whole story, but it was certainly the biggest crime story of 2011.

Last March, Dowling took over command of the Five-Two from John D’Adamo, a young deputy inspector who was re-assigned after making tabloid headlines when his wife was caught lying to Westchester County police.

Up until this fall, Dowling, who previously commanded a precinct in Washington Heights, had enjoyed a relatively quiet beginning to his tenure. Then, at the end of October, a series of seemingly random acts of violence, most of them on or around Grand Avenue and Fordham Road, put the community on edge and a neighborhood in the spotlight.

The three most frightening and disturbing incidents happened within days of each other.

On Oct. 29, Bimal Chanda, a Bengali immigrant who had lived in the area around West 190th Street and Grand Avenue for decades, was in the process of moving the last of his family’s belongings to a condo in Parkchester. (He wanted to move to a safer neighborhood.) He went out to get packing tape in the morning. His wife would later find him badly beaten in the second floor stairwell and called for help. Days later, Chanda died from his injuries. Police said thieves stole $15 from Chanda, who still possessed more than $70 in cash and all of his credit cards after the beating.

On Nov. 1, just around the corner from Chanda’s building, police say Gabriel Sherwood was stabbed to death by friends of one of Sherwood’s neighbors after a verbal altercation earlier in the day. Two were arrested and charged with Sherwood’s murder.

The following week, 4-year-old Cincer Balthazar was shot during a botched robbery attempt on Grand Avenue near Evelyn Place, just south of Fordham Road. Police said Cincer’s father was returning the boy to his mother who lived in a homeless shelter on Grand Avenue when a group of young men tried to rob him for his designer jacket. Cincer was shot in the face in the process and remains in critical yet stable condition. In a bizarre twist, Cincer’s father wrestled the gun away from the attackers, chased one of them down and shot him in the neck. Two of the attackers have been arrested and charged. The father was not charged.

In mid-November, friends of Chanda held a candlelight vigil to show their support for the victim and his family. Only four people showed up.

“They are afraid. They don’t want people to see their faces,” said Chanda’s friend Mohammad Ali, a Bengladeshi man who lives in the area. “Even my wife said she wouldn’t come tonight. She said, ‘Don’t make yourself a target.’”