Authorities are investigating the death of a 14-year-old boy who was found dead, face-down, in a Queens driveway early Tuesday, police say.
Cops responded to a 7:15 a.m. call at a home on Beach 67th Street in the Arverne neighborhood of the Rockaways, after the woman who lives at the home found the teenager on the ground as she pulled into her driveway. Then the officers discovered a gunshot wound to his lower back.
Police did not have any immediate information on potential suspects. The teen was later identified as Shawn Frye. NBC New York was told that Frye's foster mother had been looking for him since Monday night after he didn't come back home.
Get Tri-state area news and weather forecasts to your inbox. Sign up for NBC New York newsletters.
The neighbor who found the boy, Theresa Boyton, said she did not know him and had no idea why the teen ended up in front of her home, but added that the foster mother had been canvassing the neighborhood looking for him the night before.
Frye's family did not wish to speak with News 4 when reached at their home on Tuesday.
The investigation is ongoing.
One look at the latest batch of NYPD crime data statistics paints a glaring picture: The number of shootings so far in 2022 has already surpassed the totals from a few recent years.
What does that actually look like? According to the city, police have recorded 816 shooting incidents since Jan. 1, a figure that accounts for more than some entire years' totals in New York City in just the last decade. There were 789 shooting incidents in all of 2017, just 754 in 2018, and 776 in 2019.
More Stories
That statistic alone doesn't tell the entire story, however. Year-to-date, shootings in 2022 (862) are actually down from last year, but up slightly from 2020 (723). That's actually normal if you take a look at a chart of the shootings recorded over the past 30 years.
Since 1997, there have only been four consecutive years where the year-to-date stats consistently drop. Most often, every other year, or every three years, there's a slight increase.
In fact, the jump in shootings between 2019 and 2020 was the largest in over 30 years, and the year-to-date figure was still one of the lowest during that period. Only seven other years had fewer shootings in the same time period than 2020.
