Gunshots spark panic in Times Square during Knicks celebration

Gunfire ripped through Times Square on Thursday afternoon, turning one of New York City’s most monitored intersections into a scene of sprinting tourists, ducking pedestrians and police chasing a suspect through the crowd. The shots were fired around 3:40 p.m. near West 44th Street and Seventh Avenue, in the middle of a district already packed by celebrations for the Knicks’ championship parade.

Police said the chaos unfolded amid a verbal dispute or large fight before the shooting. Video from the scene showed at least two people dressed in black stepping into the intersection and opening fire with what appeared to be handguns, before fleeing down the street as officers rushed toward them. The confrontation happened just yards from a parked police vehicle, a reminder of how quickly violence can break out even in a heavily watched public space.

The New York City Fire Department said one person was taken to a hospital. Local reporting identified the victim as a 17-year-old boy who suffered a gunshot wound to the left foot. An ambulance could not make it through the dense crowd, so officers placed the teenager in a police cruiser and drove him to Bellevue Hospital, where he was listed in stable condition.

The shooting came as New York had already flooded the area with security for the Knicks’ victory parade, which began at 10 a.m. along Broadway from near Bowling Green to City Hall. The New York City Police Department said it deployed more than 10,000 officers for the event, calling it its largest planned deployment ever. Heavy-weapons teams, bomb-sniffing K-9 units and mounted units were part of the operation, underscoring the scale of the security presence downtown.

Even that footprint did not prevent panic when the shots rang out. Investigators were seeking additional people for questioning in connection with the incident, and officers were reviewing surveillance and cellphone footage as they pieced together how the confrontation escalated so quickly in the middle of a packed tourist corridor.

The episode also revived concerns about the same neighborhood after another shooting during Knicks celebration chaos on June 14, when a 17-year-old was shot in the left foot near Broadway and West 42nd Street and taken to Bellevue in stable condition. Two incidents in four days have sharpened questions about whether Times Square’s layered security can absorb fast-moving violence once a crowd starts to surge.