When Doniesha Ferguson spoke to her dad on Father’s Day, he was enjoying a favorite meal and a special gift.
“All he wanted was a wallet,” Doniesha said. “He called and said, ‘thank you for the gift.’ And he was eating his fried fish, and he was just so happy.”
Barely 24 hours later, Howard Ferguson was dead — the first of five people to be killed by gunfire on Juneteenth, making it the city’s deadliest day of gun violence so far this year.
Gun violence continues to trend downward citywide, with the NYPD’s CompStat tracking system showing 508 shooting victims this year to date, compared to 680 shooting victims at this time last year. About 20% of all shootings tend to be fatal.
But the one-day surge likely resulted from a complex convergence of factors, according to David Caba, the vice president of Good Shepherd’s Bronx Rises Against Gun Violence (B.R.A.G.)
The fact that Monday was a federal holiday could be one reason.
“Holiday means idle time,” Caba said. “ And sometimes those celebrations, you know, lead to debates. And debates then lead to what we sometimes see when it comes to violence.”
The start of summer – a time when the heat and outdoor activities generally cause gun violence to increase – could be another. The fatal shootings spanned 11 hours and three boroughs and were all seemingly unrelated.
Howard Ferguson was one of five people shot and killed on Juneteenth
Family photo
Ferguson, 48, was shot in the back around 12 p.m. at his usual bodega on White Plains Road in the Bronx after a scuffle with another man that police arrested and identified as Oriean Dorsett, 32. Doniesha Ferguson said Dorsett had been harassing her father all week, and things finally came to a head Monday when he went to get lunch.
“I hear this guy was picking on my dad for some time now, and that guy just socked him in his face and my dad fought back,” she said. “He did it so senselessly.”
Dorsett was charged with murder, manslaughter and criminal…
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