A New York City teacher was hit by a stray bullet on the eve of the first day of school while setting up his classroom, police said.
The bullet flew through the sixth-floor classroom window and struck the 33-year-old teacher in his right hand, police said.
The incident occurred shortly before noon Wednesday at a Bronx middle school, according to the NYC Department of Education.
The bullet is believed to have been fired from an elevated surface far from the school, MS 391, police said.
“The school was not targeted,” Deputy Chief Keiyon Ramsey of the NYPD’s Patrol Borough Bronx told reporters during a news briefing Wednesday.
This screenshot from Google Maps Street View shows MS 391 in the Bronx borough of New York.
Google Maps Street View
The teacher suffered a laceration to the palm of his right hand, Ramsey said. He was taken to a local hospital in stable condition and has since been released.
A fired bullet was recovered from the classroom and is being processed, Ramsey said.
Police are working to determine where the bullet came from and who fired it, according to Deputy Chief Louis Deceglie with the NYPD’s Bronx Detective Bureau Commanding Officer.
“We are currently searching all the rooftops in the vicinity, looking for both ballistic evidence and video evidence,” Deceglie told reporters during Wednesday’s briefing.
No students were in the classroom when the shooting happened, as school doesn’t start until Thursday. Also, there were no students around the school at the time, Ramsey said.
“This gross display of violence is both outrageous and reprehensible,” the DOE said in a statement. “The NYPD immediately responded to the scene where a teacher suffered non-life threatening injuries. We will provide additional support to this school community.”
There will be additional school security agents and police officers at the middle school during the first day of school Thursday “out of an abundance of caution,” Ramsey said.