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15-year-old Times Square shooting suspect taken into custody in Yonkers
NEW YORK — A teenager was arrested Friday in connection with a shooting which wounded a tourist in New York City’s Times Square Thursday night.
It was a manhunt for most of the day before U.S. Marshals found the 15-year-old at a home on Saratoga Avenue in Yonkers.
CBS New York is not naming the suspect because he is a juvenile.
The New York City Police Department reports that teen suspect was with his mother in Yonkers when he was captured, and was crying as he was taken into custody. He was still being questioned by investigators Friday night, but police say he will likely be charged as a juvenile. He’s expected to be charged with attempted murder.
The suspect arrived in New York from Venezuela less than six months ago and was living at a migrant shelter on the Upper West Side, police said.
A police source told CBS New York that he is also a suspect in a January armed robbery in the Bronx, as well as another shooting in Midtown in which no one was hurt.
Investigators could still be seen inside the Yonkers home where he was arrested late Friday night.
Watch Jennifer Bisram’s report
“If you think you can threaten the lives of the very people who keep us safe, if you think you can put others at deadly risk and get away with it, then think again. We will never stop pursuing you. We will find you, and we will arrest you,” NYPD Commissioner Edward Caban said.
Shocking surveillance video showed the moment a shooter, dressed all in white, opened fire on a female security guard inside of JD Sports in Times Square Thursday night.
“The shooting incident in Times Square last night was way beyond reckless,” Caban said.
According to police, the gunman and two friends stole clothes and sneakers and were trying to exit the store when a security guard confronted them. The teen in white can be seen on video walking away, and then turning around, pointing a .45 caliber pistol, and firing.
“The girl who got shot was between us two. We heard a big bang and then realized what happened,” tourist Lone Hansen said.
Officials said the bullet missed the guard, but hit a tourist from Brazil in the leg, barely missing Hansen and her son, who are visiting from Denmark.
“I just heard the gunshots and then everybody run,” Albert Hansen said.
Watch: NYPD provides update on Times Square shooting arrest
Police said the mayhem spilled onto the streets of Times Square, forcing people to run and duck for cover.
“He turns once. He fires towards our officer. Our officer takes his gun out. He cannot return fire, there’s too many people in his way. As the suspect goes through the cut between the buildings, he’s running, he takes his gun out under his armpit, he fires again at our officer,” NYPD Chief of Patrol John Chell said in a news briefing Friday. “I gotta tell you – one of those bullets hits our cop last night, this is a whole different conversation we’re having today. Our cop showed great restraint not to fire their weapon into crowded New Yorkers.”
“He shot [at] the NYPD officers who pursued him through the streets of Midtown without a single thought of who he might hit or who he might kill,” Caban said.
Officials said the suspect initially managed to get away by running into the subway.
“We don’t care who you are, what your status is. We’re not going to broad brush a whole migrant community as being bad people,” Chell said.
The brazen shooting in Times Square Thursday night comes after the Jan. 27 Times Square attack where a group of men – mostly migrants, according to police – assaulted two members of the NYPD. The Manhattan district attorney released body camera video Thursday, saying seven people have been indicted in that case.
Chell insisted Times Square is safe.
“Take a look around you. Thousands of people shopping, walking around. Times Square is safe. We are still the safest city in the world. If you see these incidents, our cops are right there where they’re supposed to be,” Chell said. “We’d like to prevent everything from happening, but the second best thing is to be there, effect arrests, and keep this community safe. Yes, Times Square is very safe.”
“No, I don’t feel that safe. How could you feel safe?” said Kazi Meursaed, who owns a tourist shop near the scene. “I hear two or three shots, and people run away scared.”
“There are some Venezuelan groups of migrants – and I say some, not all – that are affecting crime in our city more so now than when they first got here,” Chell said. “We saw the moped robberies and snatches. We see pockets being picked in Times Square and on the subway. We see some groups going into stores – Macy’s, Kings Plaza, Glass Hut – and stealing property. So yes, it’s a trend. But I want to be clear here again: We don’t care. We don’t care who you are, what you are, what your status is. Our job is to keep this community safe.”
The tourist who was struck by the stray bullet has been released from the hospital and is in good spirits.
In the meantime, the NYPD has a message for anyone who commits a crime in New York City.
“Your new status that the NYPD is going to give you is criminal if you start preying on vulnerable New Yorkers,” NYPD Deputy Commissioner of Operations Kaz Daughtry said.
Bisram talked with the security guard on the phone. She was back at work Friday, but did not want to talk about the incident..
Police said another 16-year-old suspect was apprehended Friday morning, and another 15-year-old was apprehended shortly after the initial shoplifting incident.
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Moscow — Former Royal Ballet star Sergei Polunin, famous for his tattoos of Russian President Vladimir Putin, on Wednesday announced that he plans to leave Russia. The Ukrainian-Russian dancer was one of the most prominent stars who backed Russia’s unilateral 2014 annexation of Crimea and its military assault on Ukraine. He was rewarded with prestigious state posts.
In a rambling, misspelled message on his Instagram account, Polunin wrote: “My time in Russia ran out a long time ago, it seems at this moment that I have fulfilled my mission here.”
The post first appeared Sunday on his little-read Telegram account.
Ian Gavan/Getty
Polunin, 35, did not give a specific reason for leaving but said that “a time comes when the soul feels it is not where it should be.”
He said he was leaving with his family — his wife Yelena and three children — but “where we will go is not clear so far.”
In the summer, the dancer complained of a lack of security and said he was being followed.
Polunin, who was born in Ukraine, backed Putin’s 2014 annexation of Crimea — a prelude to the ongoing, full-scale invasion of Ukraine that Putin launched in February 2022.
The dancer was granted Russian citizenship in 2019. He was appointed acting head of a dance academy in occupied Crimea’s biggest city, Sevastopol, and director of the city’s opera and ballet theatre, for which a large new building is under construction.
Just last year he was decorated by Putin for his role in popularizing dance. But in August he was replaced as head of the dance academy by former Bolshoi prima Maria Alexandrova, and a week ago, Russia’s arts minister Olga Lyubimova announced his theater director job would go to singer Ildar Abdrazakov.
This came after on December 9 Polunin published a social media post saying he was “very sorry for people” living in the heavily bombarded village near Ukraine’s city of Kherson, where his family originates from, and that “the worst deal would be better than war.”
Ian Gavan/Getty
Aged 13, Polunin won a scholarship to train at the Royal Ballet School in London and became its youngest ever principal dancer.
With his tattoos — including a large depiction of Putin’s face emblazoned prominently on his chest — and his rebellious attitude, he became known as the “bad boy of ballet” and caused a sensation by resigning from the Royal Ballet at the height of his fame in 2012.
Later he made a 2015 hit video to Irish musician Hozier’s song “Take Me to Church” and was the star of a 2016 documentary called “Dancer.”
He moved to perform at Moscow’s Stanislavsky Musical Theatre’s ballet before launching a solo career, starring in dance performances in roles including the mystic Grigory Rasputin.
In 2019 he posed for AFP with a large tattoo of Putin on his chest which he later supplemented with two Putin faces on either shoulder. He also has a large Ukrainian trident on his right hand.
This year he took part in Putin’s campaign for reelection as a celebrity backer.
Washington — The Supreme Court on Wednesday agreed to consider South Carolina health department’s effort to cut off funding from Planned Parenthood because it performs abortions, wading into another dispute over access to the procedure in the wake of its reversal of Roe v. Wade.
The case, known as Kerr v. Edwards, stems from the state’s decision in 2018 to end Planned Parenthood South Atlantic’s participation in its Medicaid program. Gov. Henry McMaster, a Republican, directed the South Carolina Department of Health and Human Services to deem abortion clinics unqualified to provide family planning services and end their Medicaid agreements.
Planned Parenthood operates two facilities in the state, one in Charleston and the other in Columbia, and provides hundreds of Medicaid patients with services like physicals, cancer and other health screenings, pregnancy testing and contraception. Federal law prohibits Medicaid from paying for abortions except in cases of rape or incest, or to save the life of the mother.
Planned Parenthood and one of its patients, Julie Edwards, sued the state, arguing that cutting off its funding violated a provision of the Medicaid Act that gives beneficiaries the right to choose their provider.
A federal district court blocked South Carolina from ending Planned Parenthood’s participation in its Medicaid program, and a U.S. appeals court upheld that decision, finding that Edwards could sue the state to enforce the Medicaid Act’s free-choice-of-provider requirement.
The legal battle has already been before the Supreme Court in the past, with the high court last year ordering additional proceedings after deciding in a separate case that nursing home residents could sue their state-owned health care facility over alleged violations of civil rights.
After reconsidering its earlier decision, the three-judge appeals court panel ruled unanimously in March that Edwards’ lawsuit against the state could go forward and said South Carolina couldn’t strip Planned Parenthood of state Medicaid funds.
“This case is, and always has been, about whether Congress conferred an individually enforceable right for Medicaid beneficiaries to freely choose their healthcare provider. Preserving access to Planned Parenthood and other providers means preserving an affordable choice and quality care for an untold number of mothers and infants in South Carolina,” Judge Harvie Wilkinson wrote for the 4th Circuit panel.
South Carolina officials asked the Supreme Court to review that decision, marking the third time the case has been before the justices. The justices agreed to take up the question of whether “the Medicaid Act’s any-qualified provider provision unambiguously confers a private right upon a Medicaid beneficiary to choose a specific provider.”
South Carolina is among the more than two dozen that have passed laws restricting access to abortion in the wake of the Supreme Court’s June 2022 decision reversing Roe v. Wade. In South Carolina, abortion is outlawed after six weeks of pregnancy with some exceptions.
Several states have also enacted laws blocking Planned Parenthood from receiving Medicaid funding, including Arkansas, Missouri, Mississippi and Texas.
