A 17-year-old girl was shot and killed in Brooklyn on Wednesday, and police say the suspects took off on a scooter. As TimMcNicholas reports, this comes as the NYPD reveals they are actively investigating a rash of moped- and scooter-involved crimes.
CBS2's Tim McNicholas spoke to one victim, who asked not to be identified because she's afraid the suspect who robbed her will find her and hurt her again.intersection over the summer. She suffered some scrapes and says her knee was bruised and swollen.
"But really what's worse is I lost my peace of mind, my sense of safety," she said."I'm still very paranoid."Video from June shows another moped mugging in Brooklyn. There was another in July in Queens and an attempted robbery on the Upper East Side in August. "The scooter robbery patterns we have throughout the city, I think last count it was up to 16, 17 different patterns," NYPD Chief of Detectives James Essig said.
Essig says the suspects' scooters, which often have no plates or the wrong plates, zip by pedestrians on sidewalks. "It's a very difficult stop for patrols, if you're in a car, to stop one of these scooters. If anybody's seen them riding up and around, it's a very difficult task to do, and that's why the perpetrators are using them," Essig said.