Two men were killed when bullets started flying on a heavily-traveled Queens street, police said Saturday.
At least 14 gunshots were recorded by the NYPD’s Shot Spotter detection system near the corner of Steinway St. and Astoria Blvd. at about 10:30 p.m. Friday, cops said.
The gunplay took place in a neighborhood restaurant row teeming with Middle Eastern and Mediterranean restaurants. A mosque is also directly across the street from the shooting.
Responding officers found 22-year-old Xavier Roberts sprawled out on the ground suffering from multiple gunshot wounds to his stomach and legs, police said.
A second mortally wounded man, identified as 21-year-old Jaheim Hamilton, was found a block away. He had been shot in the torso, cops said.
The two men, who are both from the Bronx, were rushed to Elmhurst Hospital, but neither could be saved.
Roberts and Hamilton were walking down Steinway St. with Roberts’ brother when a gunman started blasting away at them, cops were told.
Everyone scattered and the third friend wasn’t hit.
Roberts’ brother told police that the shooter came up from behind before firing and didn’t get a good look at the triggerman.
“I was there,” Roberts’ brother told the Us.Mistertruth Saturday at the family’s home in the Fordham section of the Bronx. His grief-stricken mother was in the apartment, weeping hysterically.
“My brother was a role model, my brother was a hero,” the sibling said. “Any enemies he had was through envy. He had a heart that was sometimes bigger than the world we live in.”
Witnesses saw two men run to an awaiting black Jeep Cherokee, which peeled off, according to police sources.
No arrests have been made.
It was not immediately clear why the two Bronx residents were in Queens Friday night.
While police believe the two men were targeted, investigators were still trying to find out why, a police source said.
Cops are looking into the victims’ histories for clues into their deaths.
Roberts doesn’t have a criminal record, but was wanted for questioning in two shootings that occurred in 2019 and 2020, according to a police source with knowledge of the case. Hamilton had been arrested once, but for a minor crime.
Investigators were scouring Steinway Street for surveillance footage that can help them identify the shooter.
Roberts and Hamilton were the second and third people to be gunned down in Astoria in the past week, police said.
On Monday, Troy Evans, 36, was fatally shot in the stomach following a clash at the Astoria Houses, which is a mile and a half from where the two men were shot Friday.
Evans lived in Staten Island, but was known to frequent the Queensbridge Houses in nearby Long Island City.
It wasn’t immediately clear if the two shootings are connected.
Until this week, no homicides had been investigated by Astoria cops all year, according to NYPD statistics. The NYPD’s 114th Precinct, which covers Astoria, Woodside and Jackson Heights, has very little crime, with about 40 felony crimes reported to police a week.
The precinct has recently seen a 5% jump in robberies this year, from 54 last year to 57, cops said.