Eric Adams calls shooting death of Queens 10-year-old ‘crushing’
Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams on Sunday called the shooting death of a 10-year-old boy in Queens “crushing” — while vowing to halt spiraling gun violence in the Big Apple if he’s elected mayor.
“It was just crushing,” the mayoral race front-runner said at a press conference, referring to Justin Wallace, who was gunned down in Far Rockaway Saturday night.
“We just had a 10-year-old baby shot. Who is at that school now helping with those babies that are going through PTSD and the trauma they are experiencing?”
Adams also decried a shooting in The Bronx, also on Saturday, that left a 12-year-old girl with a gunshot wound to the ankle.
“Two shootings of children in one day,” he said. “I am not going to allow these shootings to be on the back seat of our battle. We can have justice and safety.
“Many people don’t want to say we can have both,” he continued outside the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem. “I know we can have both and I’m the right person to do it.”
Adams, a retired NYPD captain, made the comments while announcing the endorsement of various black and Latino educators in his mayoral bid.
In a press release earlier Sunday, former New York City sanitation commissioner Kathryn Garcia, another City Hall contender, also denounced the young boy’s shooting.
“Last night a 10-year-old was shot and killed in the Rockaways,” Garcia said. “Earlier this week I was in Corona where a 29-year-old had been shot and killed — and these were just two of well over a dozen shootings this week.”
“Gun violence is taking place in New York City communities where our political leaders often don’t go, in the places they don’t see,” she said. “As mayor, I will confiscate 10,000 guns in my first year, no matter what.”
At a separate press conference in Midtown Manhattan, mayoral candidate Maya Wiley also condemned the boy’s death.
“There’s a mother in New York City whose 10-year-old baby boy took his last breath last night because he was hit by a bullet and killed in Queens,” Wiley said.
“Now, I don’t know about you, but let me tell you one thing I do know: The thing about mothers is that their children are ours,” she said. “When we hear any mother or any father has lost a child, we’ve all lost a child.”
The comments by Wiley, a civil rights attorney, come one day after she was endorsed by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Adams and businessman Andrew Yang remain the front-runners for the Democratic nomination to replace Mayor Bill de Blasio.
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