Here is more news about what when down in Chinatown this past Saturday night. This one is from the New York Daily News:
Chinatown barrage stumps cops
By MICHELE McPHEE and ALICE McQUILLAN
DAILY NEWS POLICE BUREAU
Officer with the NYPD’s crime scene unit stands amid 45 shell casings marked at the scene of a fatal shooting on Division St. in Chinatown Saturday.
Police are eying bus company rivalry or gambling as the possible motives in the wild Chinatown machine-gun shootout that killed one man and wounded a second, sources said yesterday.
More than 40 shots ripped through Division St. near Market St. late Saturday after a dispute in a restaurant spilled outside.
An unidentified man in his 30s died after being shot in the chest and body about 10:45 p.m.
A 27-year-old man, who was not identified by police, survived multiple gunshots and is in critical but stable condition at Bellevue Hospital.
His girlfriend, a ticket agent for a Chinatown bus company, drove the wrong way down Elizabeth St. to get him to the Fifth Precinct, sources said. She carried the bleeding man into the station house.
Her car, which she left in the street, blocked the route of an ambulance trying to reach the second victim, who died an hour later at NYU Downtown Hospital, sources said.
Police said they are investigating the war between competing Chinatown coach companies and gambling as possible motives.
“We have no witnesses, no videotape and no cooperation. Nobody’s talking,” said a law enforcement source. “We really don’t know what happened yet, but a lot of bullets were flying.”
Cops said they recovered a .38-caliber handgun and 45 shell casings, 34 of them from a machine gun, five from a .38-caliber gun and six from a .45-caliber gun.
Anyone with information is asked to call (800) 577-TIPS or the Fifth Precinct at (212) 334-0742
I love the part how the girlfriend drives down the street the wrong way to get her bleeding gangster boyfriend to the hospital which saves his life while blocking the ambulance that was going to the other guy the boyfriend was with. I’m wondering about whether or not the boyfriend was actually trying to kill the other guy. If so, then that girlfriend hit the daily double because she basically finished off the other guy by blocking ambulance access to him. There is no mention of whether or not the girlfriend is being charged with any crime so I’m guessing that they he was a fellow and not rival gang member, or maybe an innocent bystander. Another reason I’m guessing that he wasn’t the target of the boyfriend is based on the what the New York Times had to say:
Man Is Killed in a Shooting in Chinatown
By ANDREA ELLIOTT
Published: January 19, 2004
One man was shot dead and another wounded on a Chinatown street on Saturday night, the police said yesterday.
The two victims were standing on the sidewalk near 49 Division Street about 10:45 p.m. when one or more people opened fire at them. A 30-year-old man was shot in the chest and taken to New York University Downtown Hospital, where he was pronounced dead an hour later, the police said. They did not release his name.
The other victim, 27, was shot twice – once in the left shoulder and once in the stomach. He showed up at the Fifth Precinct station house, two blocks from the shooting scene, a few minutes later, the police said. That victim, who was also not named by the police, was taken to Bellevue Hospital Center, where he was in critical but stable condition, the police said.
Officers recovered a .38-caliber revolver and 45 casings at the scene of the shooting, which rattled the otherwise calm street, which is lined with dim sum restaurants and electronics shops. Shopkeepers said they worried that the shooting would drive away business.
Just steps from where the shooting occurred, a bullet had blown a hole the size of a grapefruit into the front window of the Golden Bowl Restaurant. A makeshift sign on pink paper covered the hole and announced, in Chinese, that the restaurant was hiring.
The restaurant had closed at 9 p.m. Saturday, but the window remained exposed because the shop’s iron security gate was broken and could not be pulled down over it, employees said. They said they found the hole when they came to work yesterday morning, as well as a stray bullet on the floor, which the police took.
“We didn’t know what happened until we saw the newspapers,” said Paula Zou, 30, a waitress who spoke through a Chinese translator. “We thought it was a thief.”
Throughout the day, people talked about the shooting, which Chinatown’s three main newspapers, The Ming Pao Daily News, The World Journal and The Sing Tao Daily, reported on their front pages.
“It was a big thing for Chinatown,” said Roxanne Lo, a reporter for The Ming Pao Daily News. “People in Chinatown have concerns that gangs are coming back.”
A police spokesman said it was too early to tell whether the shooting was gang related.
This version is somewhat closer to what I remember, though again, things happened very quickly and I was more concerned about getting to safety rather than noticing the finer points of the excitement.