The Bronx teen shot in the head while walking home from school Monday is just the latest in a disturbing list of innocent New Yorkers struck by stray bullets this year.
The NYPD does not keep separate statistics on stray bullet shootings, but media reports show there have been at least seven people fatally shot by errant bullets this year, compared to four in 2008. And three of the dead have been teenagers.
Several others, including a young Little Leaguer in Brooklyn, were shot but survived.
For all of their loved ones, it's often the randomness of the crime that gnaws at them.
The January dance party where 17-year-old Nyasia Pryear-Yard spent her final night seemed like a safe place for the straight-A teen. The bash was alcohol-free, and it had been moved from its original location because of a stabbing.
But as the party was winding down, a fight broke out and Pryear-Yard was shot in the face, dying just months before she was to graduate from Nazareth Regional High School. There has been no arrest.
"I think about my daughter every day, about the 'what-if' factor. What if she didn't go out? What if she left a half hour early?" her father, Alberto Yard, said in an interview last month.
NYPD statistics show that overall shootings are down 7% this year compared to last, and there have also been fewer murders this year than in 2008.
That's little comfort, though, to the family of 87-year-old Anna Surman, who was pierced in the neck by a bullet in August as she sat on a bench in the courtyard of the Surfside Gardens House. There has been no arrest.
"It seems like an everyday occurrence," said her 24-year-old grandson, Michael Surman. "The chances of somebody walking by at that moment are pretty small, but it happens."
Sadie Mitchell, 92, was fatally hit while watching a game show in her Bronx apartment on Oct. 20, while earlier in the month, 13-year-old Kevin Miller was struck and died while walking to McDonald's for snack.
Aisha Santiago, 25, was walking with her son to their Bronx Laundromat when she was gunned down in September. And Jesselle Page, 44, was watching her grandnephew play at a Brooklyn park when she was struck by a bullet in July.
In April, Christopher Owens, 13, was hit in the head by a bullet at a block party in Harlem. The eighth-grader was left brain dead and taken off life support days later.
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