Gunman on scooter shoots randomly in New York City, killing an 87-year-old and wounding others

A scooter-riding gunman killed an 87-year-old man and wounded three others in a string of random shootings. Photo / AP

A scooter-riding gunman killed an 87-year-old man and wounded three others in a string of random shootings that stretched across two New York City boroughs, police said on Sunday.

A 25-year-old man was taken into custody without incident and his identity was not revealed by police, Assistant Police Chief Joseph Kenny said at a news conference. A 9 mm handgun with an extended magazine and a scooter were recovered.

The New York Police Department (NYPD) pulled an image of the gunman from video and sent it to phones of officers, some of whom spotted the suspect about two hours after the first shooting.

“We don’t know the motive. It seems his acts were random,” Kenny said.

A gun recovered at the scene of a shooting, in the Queens borough of New York. Photo / AP

In all, the NYPD said there were five shootings carried out during the spree by someone on a scooter, one in Brooklyn and four in Queens. No one was injured in one of the shootings.

The shootings began around 11.10am when someone on a scooter shot a 21-year-old man in the shoulder in Brooklyn. He was brought to a hospital and is expected to survive, police said.

Seventeen minutes later, an 87-year-old man was shot multiple times in the Richmond Hill area of Queens. He later died at a hospital.

Shortly afterwards in Queens, witnesses reported a man on a scooter firing randomly into a group of people, although nobody was hurt.

Eight minutes later, a 44-year-old man was shot in the face. He was in critical condition at the Jamaica Hospital Medical Centre.

About one minute later, a 63-year-old man was shot in the torso. He was in a stable condition at a hospital.

Killings in the nation’s most populous city have risen in recent years to about where they were a decade ago - well below an early-1990s peak. The number of people wounded by gunfire surged in New York City during the pandemic and remains stubbornly high, and the city has also confronted a series of high-profile crimes.

Mayor Eric Adams, a former New York City police captain, has stressed the importance of getting guns off the streets.