A 27-year-old man has been arrested following the fatal shooting of a second 35-year-old man last month in the Mt. Hope section of The Bronx.
NYPD officials said that on Sunday, Oct. 1, at around 5.11 p.m., police responded to a 911 call regarding a person who had been shot inside a residential building located at 154 East 175th Street.
“Upon arrival, officers discovered a 35-year-old male with a sustained gunshot wound to the torso,” a police spokesperson said. “EMS responded to the location and transported the victim to St. Barnabas Hospital, where he was pronounced deceased. There are no arrests, and the investigation remains ongoing.”
The deceased was later identified as Cleveland Smith, 35, from the Mt. Hope section of The Bronx.
On Friday, Nov. 8, pursuant to an ongoing investigation, police said Fili Nunez Rodriguez of Washington Heights in Manhattan had been arrested on Nov. 1 at 9.25 a.m. hours in The Bronx.
He was charged with murder, criminal possession of a weapon (a loaded firearm) and reckless endangerment. A person arrested and charged with a crime is deemed innocent unless and until convicted in a court of law.
Another 40-year-old man, Miguel Diaz, who had been released from prison four months earlier, was also recently arrested for a separate daylight, nonfatal shooting outside a deli in the Mt. Hope section of the Bronx in which one person was hit in the arm on Oct. 4, as reported.
According to the latest crime statistics released by the NYPD, overall crime declined again in October, led by an ongoing reduction in shootings and murders, and an increasing number of arrests made across all seven major index crime categories. Police said the City saw an 8.1% drop in shooting incidents in October 2023 compared to October 2022 (79 v. 86). They said this continuing decline extended the 25.7% decrease in shooting incidents experienced citywide year to date, compared to the same period last year (839 v. 1,129).
They said that, importantly, 384 fewer people have been shot year to date in 2023, compared to 2022, and 45 fewer people have been murdered in 2023 compared to last year.
In October 2023, they said the NYPD made 361 arrests for gun possession citywide, bringing the total number of gun arrests to 3,735 year to date through October. Gun seizures across the five boroughs so far this year amount to 5,585 through the end of October, bringing the total number of firearms taken off New York City streets and kept out of criminals’ hands since the start of the beginning of the Adams administration to 12,720.
The police commissioner said of the latest released statistics, “The men and women of the NYPD continue to work hand in hand with the people we serve throughout the five boroughs. Public safety is a shared responsibility that takes everybody, in every neighborhood, doing their part. That is how we will sustain low levels of crime and further reduce violence and disorder across our great city.”
In the Bronx, as of Nov. 5, year-to-date shootings boroughwide were down 19.8 % (283 in 2023 v 353 in 2022). The number of year-to-date shooting victims has also dropped by 18.3% (340 in 2023 v 416 in 2022).
However, in the 46th Precinct, which serves the central part of the western Bronx, including parts of Fordham, University Heights, Morris Heights and Mt. Hope, which is where the referenced shooting occurred, year-to-date shootings were also up by 28.1 % (41 in 2023 v 32 in 2022).
The number of shooting victims in this precinct year-to-date also increased by 44.4% as of Nov. 5 (52 in 2023 v 36 in 2022).
Anyone with information in regard to this latest incident 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.
All calls are strictly confidential.