Two women were hospitalized after they were fired upon by a man in a shocking daylight shooting reportedly by a bus stop on the Grand Concourse in Fordham Heights earlier this week.

 

Police said that on Wednesday, May 3, at around 1.51 p.m., police responded to a report of an assault in progress at 2479 Grand Concourse, located in the 46th Precinct. “Upon arrival, officers observed a 44-year-old female victim with multiple gunshot wounds about the body, and a 52-year-old female victim with a gunshot wound to the leg,” a police spokesperson said.

“Both victims were transported by EMS to St. Barnabas Hospital in stable condition” the spokesperson added. There were no initial arrests and the investigation continued.

 

When contacted by Norwood News for further information around the circumstances which led up to the shooting and an apparent reported prior dispute in the vicinity of the incident, which at least one media outlet had reported took place in a mobile phone store, an NYPD spokeswoman told Norwood News, “I have that the dispute was inside of the bank. We believe that the woman cut him off or skipped him in line and that’s where the argument started.”

We asked if the bank in question was TD bank located on the corner of the block at 148 East Fordham Road and the Grand Concourse, and the spokesperson said it was.

 

It is not the first time a person has been shot in the borough while waiting in line inside a business. As reported, on May 9, 2021, a 30-year-old man was fatally shot in the head in Belmont while waiting in line for the bathroom inside a bar, after a dispute arose among customers.

 

Norwood News contacted TD Bank’s media department for comment both by phone and email about the incident. We asked how many people were in the bank location at the time the dispute arose, if the shooter had been armed while inside the bank location, and whether or not security had intervened. A spokesperson for the bank’s corporate and public affairs team, Matthew J. Doherty, referred us to the NYPD, and said the bank had “no comment.”

Norwood News has reported previously on the frustrations of Bronxites due to the closure of some banking services in the borough over the last number of years, along with other measures by existing banks with the support of local elected officials to retain or reopen services for locals. It is an ongoing hot topic.

 

The busy Fordham area in question where the shooting took place is serviced by a number of ATM locations and at least one check cashing service including Citi, Bank of America, TD Bank, Apple Bank and Western Union, the latter which operates 24/7. Customers were seen late on Friday night, May 5, carrying out their banking business.

 

We spoke to an employee of a Smoke Shop located on the corner of 188th Street and Grand Concourse at the opposite end of the block on which the shooting took place about the incident. He said he did not see it take place but that people who were there when the incident happened later spoke to him afterwards and told him a masked man had approached the two women at the bus stop, shot them, and then ran away down Grand Concourse and around the corner,  [gesturing towards 188th Street].

 

The employee added that the whole block was cornered off from the smoke shop up as far as Marshalls [on the Grand Concourse and East Fordham Road] for about three hours after the incident and that the stores closed while the police carried out their investigation.

 

Two other women we spoke to who were standing at the same bus stop location on Friday night, May 5, said they had heard of the incident and when asked how they felt about it, told Norwood News, “terrified” and “very scared.” One of the woman added, “This area is very congested in general at that time of the day.”  They said it was scary to think that something like that could happen in the middle of the afternoon.

 

A local store employee of Lucky Seven Grocery said that he had also heard there was a shooting but “didn’t want to get involved” and that was all he knew.

 

On Thursday, May 4, police said that pursuant to an ongoing investigation, Carlos Rivera, 63, of East 178th Street in the Mt Hope section of The Bronx was arrested at 3.15 p.m. the same day. They said he was charged with two counts of attempted murder, two counts of assault and two counts of criminal possession of a weapon.

 

A person arrested and charged with a crime is deemed innocent unless and until convicted in a court of law.

 

Anyone with information regarding this 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.nypdonline.org/ or on Twitter @NYPDTips.

 

All calls are strictly confidential.