Bloody weekend in New York

"It was a bad weekend, no question about that," New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said during an early morning press conference today. That might be putting things nicely.

More than 50 people have been injured in violent attacks over the Labor Day weekend that took the lives of 10 New Yorkers.

News wires are reporting a rough statistic of at least 48 people being shot at in New York over the three-day weekend, which included 24 victims in a 24 hour period at one point and 33 persons in all being shot on Sunday alone.

Two NYPD officers were wounded in the altercations over the weekend, both occurring at a Monday night gun battle in Brooklyn. Three were fatally shot in that brawl that occurred in the Crown Heights neighborhood at around 9pm Labor Day evening. In that incident, a 32 year-old ex-con opened fire at a group of people, including one bystander, a 56-year-old woman, who was executed after a stray bullet entered her head. The assailant, Leroy Webster, fired upwards of 60 bullets before police shot and killed him on Monday.

This weekend`s bloodbath began with the shooting of a 35-year-old woman on a Brooklyn street corner early Saturday morning. Before 6 a.m. Sunday, the New York Daily News reports that 13 other incidents occurred throughout the city`s boroughs.

A 30-year-old man was found dead early Sunday morning after gun shots were reported in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn. Elsewhere that same day, eight people, including three children, were shot by a lone gunman at a backyard party in the Bronx. Early Monday in East Flatbush, another four men were shot, including a 17-year-old boy who lost his life in the incident.

Mayor Bloomberg has responded to the epidemic by pointing the finger at Washington, where he says lawmakers are not handling the gun problem in an effective manner.

"This is a national problem requiring national leadership," Bloomberg said early Tuesday, "but at the moment neither end of Pennsylvania Avenue has had the courage to take basic steps that would save lives."

Responding in particular to the death of Denise Gay, the 56-year-old woman killed by a stray bullet on her stoop late Monday, Bloomberg called it "a senseless murder, and another painful reminder I think of what happens when elected officials in Washington fail to take the problem of illegal guns seriously."

"The bottom line is we`ve just got to redouble the efforts," said the mayor.

The New York Daily News reports that 1,123 people were shot in the city of New York between January 1, 2011 and August 28.

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