Two Bronx families on Tuesday were mourning promising young men shot to death in separate incidents just hours apart in a spate of gun violence that also left four people wounded.
The bloodshed comes the week after Mayor Adams vowed to send more than 1,000 cops to the Bronx to tamp down a surge of violent crime in the borough.
Jamari Henry died after he and four other men were shot on Allerton Ave. near White Plains Road in Allerton about 7:30 p.m. on Monday.
“It’s like a nightmare that I’m waking up from,” his distraught grandmother Vanessa Connor said. “He’s my first grandkid. I gave him his first car. I gave him his first phone.”
Henry, 25, was part of a group of friends congregating outside a smoke shop when a gray Honda rolled up, witnesses told police.
At least four people jumped out of the Honda and opened fire at the group, hitting most of them in the legs and arms. Henry was hit multiple times in the chest and body.
The shooters returned to the Honda and sped off, only to crash the car a half mile away at Arnow and Hone Aves., officials said.
Medics rushed all five victims to Jacobi Medical Center, where Henry died. His family believes he must have been an unintended target.
“He’s a jokester. He was a good person,” Connor said from the family’s home in Wakefield. “My first grandbaby — gone.”
A motive for the bloodshed was not immediately disclosed by cops.
Before the shooting, Henry had planned to meet up with his mother so they could do their laundry together, his grandmother said.
“He washed his own clothes. But he liked to go with his mom. He’s a mama’s boy,” Connor said. “Honestly, him and his mama were very close.”
Henry’s mom had been showing off a picture of her sons just before the shooting, Connor recalled.
“[My daughter] was showing me a picture with me and them when they was little. She has it as a screen saver,” Connor said. “She said, ‘Mom, I need to take a picture with me and all my sons, an updated picture.’ ”
“An hour later, now you call me and tell me he got shot?” Connor added. “We was just talking about this an hour before.”
Henry’s mom is taking her son’s death hard.
“Yesterday she was destroyed,” Connor said. “Right now she’s doing the best that she can, because they were so close. He looked just like her. They were very, very close.”
Henry’s godmother was the first to arrive at the hospital, where she was told he was struck five times, including twice in the back, twice in one of his arms and once in the groin.
“By the time they got him to Jacobi he was gone,” the godmother, 45-year-old Mekieba Simpson, said as she visited the crime scene Tuesday afternoon. “He liked to play basketball and video games. He finished school, wasn’t in no gangs. He had a loving mother, a loving father.”
“He was known by the community. Brought up by a beautiful mother who’s right now in distress,” she added. “We have to do better. This is horrible. He didn’t even begin life yet. … All he did was come out and chill with his friends.”
The other victims in the Allerton shooting — a 27-year-old man shot in the foot, a 25-year-old man hit in the arm, a 21-year-old man also hit in the arm and another 27-year-old man with a graze wound to the leg — are all expected to recover.
Responding officers took the four suspects who crashed into custody. One of them was injured during the crash and was taken to Jacobi Medical Center.
Three firearms were found in the car, officials said. Charges against the suspects were pending Tuesday.
Connor hopes those responsible for the shooting are sent to prison, but no sentence will ever make up for what they’ve done, she said.
“Even though you get 15 years in jail, you still got your life,” she said. “[My grandson] don’t even have a life. His life was cut short. … They need to be in jail for life.”
Meanwhile, about 2 a.m. on Tuesday, 21-year-old Jontay Davis was found shot in the head behind St. Barnabas Hospital on Third Ave. near E. 182nd St. in Belmont, the Bronx. Medics rushed him inside, but he could not be saved.
Police believe someone dumped Davis behind the hospital and fled. He lived less than a mile from the hospital.
His grief-stricken mother sobbed uncontrollably as she tried to fathom what had happened. Davis, she said, had just graduated high school and wanted to be a mechanic.
“He was a beautiful child,” she said, wiping the tears from her face.
Detectives have not ruled out the possibility Davis was wounded in the Allerton shooting, but have not found any indication that is the case, a police source said. There have been no arrests in his slaying.
Neighbors described Davis as a friendly young man often seen walking his dog.
“He’s a good kid, a great kid,” said one neighbor, who wished to be identified only as Kevin. “He had the best dog, never barks. It was a happy dog.”
Davis always greeted Kevin, 53, as they passed each other in the halls, he remembered.
“He wasn’t the type to be in the streets,” he said.
Last Thursday, Adams made his announcement about the extra cops in the Bronx on a basketball court at Haffen Park in Baychester, where a gang-related mass shooting at a basketball tournament on Aug. 23 left one man dead and four wounded, including a teen girl in critical condition with a bullet lodged behind her eye.
One day before the shooting at the tournament, four teens between the ages of 13 and 15 were wounded when gunfire broke out around 4 p.m. on Tratman Ave. near St. Peters Ave., down the block from the Pearly Gates playground in Westchester Square, cops said.
Back-to-back homicides occurred in the Bronx on Aug. 26, including one during a robbery. The next day, in Morrisania, disgruntled tenant Jimmy Avila fatally shot the superintendent of his apartment building during an ongoing dispute over access to the backyard, officials said.
Avila died of an apparent suicide at Rikers Island Saturday, the day after he was arraigned on murder charges, officials said.
The violence continued Friday night when three men were shot outside a church in Fordham. All of their injuries were minor, cops said.
The Bronx has had more shootings so far this year than in Manhattan, Queens and Staten Island combined. The Bronx also leads the city with 69 murders this year, accounting for a third of the 206 murders that have happened across the five boroughs.
Despite the violence, the Bronx has seen a 19% drop in shootings so far this year compared with last year, down to 178 versus 220 people hit by gunfire by the end of August.
Originally Published: September 2, 2025 at 9:04 AM EDT
