12-year-old boy killed in Bronx bodega shooting

A 12-year-old boy was shot and killed in the Bronx on Saturday evening, July 25, 2026, after gunfire erupted during a street brawl outside a neighborhood bodega. The victim, identified by authorities as Jacob Freytes, was an innocent bystander struck by a stray bullet. Two other men were wounded in the shooting.

The incident occurred shortly before 5 p.m. outside the Wanda Deli Grocery on Elliot Place near the Grand Concourse in the Mount Eden neighborhood. Surveillance footage released by the United Bodegas of America shows a fistfight involving several men breaking out in the street. A man in a black baseball cap, white T-shirt, and black shorts is then seen pulling a handgun and firing multiple shots into the crowd before fleeing. Freytes, who had just purchased a ball from the store and was getting on his bicycle, was watching the commotion when he was hit. Video shows him running back into the bodega clutching his shoulder before collapsing near the front counter.

Emergency responders transported Freytes to Lincoln Hospital, where he was pronounced dead from a gunshot wound to the shoulder. A 34-year-old man was shot in the left foot and a 25-year-old man was shot in the...