NEW YORK — New York Police Department detectives have released images of the four Queens gunmen who turned a New Year’s Day “celebration of life” for a murdered teen into a bloody shooting gallery, officials said Saturday.
Two of the masked gunmen were caught on surveillance cameras with pistols in their hands, police said.
The masked quartet are wanted for opening fire outside the Amazura concert hall at 144th Pl. near Archer Ave. in Jamaica around 11:15 p.m. Wednesday, striking 10 people waiting to attend a celebration honoring Tea’Arion Mungo.
Mungo was shot to death outside NYCHA’s Walt Whitman Houses in Brooklyn in October. His family scheduled the celebration on what would have been his 17th birthday, family and friends said.
The shooters fired around 30 shots from the corner — about 75 to 100 feet from the crowd, police said.
Three boys and seven girls between 16 and 19 years old were hit by gunfire. Most of the victims were shot in the legs as they scrambled for cover. One teen was shot in the arm and another suffered a graze wound to the back, cops said.
Police were trying to establish if the shooting was sparked by tensions between rival gangs.
“That’s one of the avenues we’re pursuing but it’s too early to determine right now,” NYPD Chief of Patrol Philip Rivera said at an early morning news conference outside the Queens club Thursday.
As the gun smoke cleared, the four suspects ran off west on 91st St. and jumped into a gray Infiniti sedan with New Jersey plates, cops said.
No arrests have been made.
Mungo, an 11th-grader who attended George Westinghouse Career and Technical Education High School, was an aspiring electrician who played varsity basketball for the school’s team, the Warriors, relatives said.
Investigators said the venue space was booked for more than it could hold, with people entering as others left.
According to sources, Tea’Arion’s still-grieving mother wanted to invite 120 people, but the space only holds 90. Police said the limit left some people waiting outside as the gunfire erupted.
Among the victims of the Amazura shooting was an 18-year-old girl who was friends with Tea’Arion from their Brooklyn neighborhood, according to her father. The girl was struck in the left shin and was undergoing a five-hour operation.
“She’s in a lot of pain,” the worried father said. “Only time will tell, and we’ll see what happens with recovery, and, you know, emotionally. I’ve been at the hospital from the time it happened, so I’m still trying to process all this stuff. It’s very heartbreaking, I have to sit here and watch my child screaming at the top of her lungs.”
He said his daughter called him shortly after she had been shot.
“You get this phone call in the middle of the night and this is what happened,” he said. “You panic because there’s no information given to you until you get there. She called me, actually. She said ‘Dad I got shot.’ She was in the ambulance. I was like, ‘What?’ The ambulance guy, he told me what hospital she was at, so I just went there.”
The shooters were all wearing hooded sweatshirts and surgical masks. They also wore surgical gloves.