A hard-working fruit stall seller who was beaten so brutally that his family had to cover his bashed head with a fedora at his funeral.
An innocent 29-year-old father, excited about his daughter’s upcoming third birthday, is murdered by a vicious gangbanger.
An autistic, obsessive-compulsive man who bleeds in his lobby after accidentally moving his killer’s backpack.
These were among the crimes in the NYPD’s deadliest precinct in 2024 – the 46th precinct of the Bronx – which saw 27 murders and 65 people shot, prompting calls from police for more resources and locals fearful of being shot by the police. to walk blood-soaked streets.
The police department — which oversees the troubled neighborhoods of Fordham, University Heights, Morris Heights and Mount Hope — faced a staggering 107.7% increase in homicides and bumps in other major crimes from the previous year, according to data from the NYPD.
“If you meet someone, they want to kill you,” said Ronaysi Gomez, 25, whose innocent bystander brother, Ronald Gomez-Mesa, 29, was fatally stabbed on July 2 in Morris Heights.
“Right now we don’t have any security. We don’t know when we’ll ever get home safely because right now everything is crazy.
“This is just terrible,” she said of the skyrocketing homicide rate.
“How can we live like this? This is not what we want to live with.”
Gomez’s fears are heightened by rising crime in the area covered by the 46th station building.
Major crimes in the district were up in every category – murder (107.7%), rape (54.5%), theft (9.1%), assault (10.9%), burglary (28.9% ) and grand theft (21.2%) – except for auto theft, according to NYPD data.
Bullets flew and in 50 exchanges of fire some 65 victims were shot.
Lower crime rates in other parts of the Big Apple have done little to ease the Gomez family’s fear and grief.
“I heard the crime rate is going down, but I haven’t seen it,” the younger sister told The Post after the heartbroken, close-knit family spent the holidays without Ronald — who lived with his parents. Ronaysi and her children.
Months earlier, Ronald Gomez-Mesa was sitting outside the Jason Deli and Grocery at West Tremont Avenue and Phelan Place when a woman and a man got into a fender bender, according to sources.
The woman then called Clement Boateng, an alleged member of the River Park Towers gang who had four previous arrests, including one for gun possession as of Sept. 22, 2016, sources told The Post.
Boateng, 35, showed up and randomly attacked unsuspecting witnesses after a man threw something at him and drove away, wild surveillance video showed.
An enraged Boateng then lunged at two nearby men, including Gomez-Mesa.
The victim fought back before Boateng allegedly plunged a knife into his chest.
Just a week before Gomez-Mesa was killed, he passed his TLC driver’s license exam — and hoped to use it to care for his daughter Rosalia, who would turn three a few weeks later.
“He couldn’t even enjoy spending her birthday with him,” Ronaysi said, adding that the killing devastated her mother.
A mile away, fruit seller Leslie Sanchez, 56, was beaten to death with a baseball bat in an unprovoked attack while he was working at his outlet on East Fordham Road near the Grand Concourse on September 12.
Sanchez, a father of two, was left so badly battered that his family said they placed a fedora on his head in the casket to hide the bruises.
His heartbroken widow, Maciel Vasquez, called his killing an “injustice.”
“My husband was a good man. He was not a problematic person,” she told The Post after police arrested her husband’s accused attackers, both of whom had been arrested previously.
“I ask the police and the governor to please do their job,” she pleaded.
Law enforcement experts and Bronx officers who spoke to The Post blamed the high crime rates on bail reform, police fleeing the department in recent years and a lack of patrols.
“It’s an impoverished area, so we’re just exhausted,” Michael Alcazar, a former NYPD detective and professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, told The Post. “We just can’t saturate areas with law enforcement when we normally could.
“If we don’t have police officers, crime will only increase,” he added.
A Bronx officer said that some nights there are only two or three cars patrolling the entire vast area.
“There are no police patrolling the grounds,” he said.
“The criminals know there are no police around, so they have no problem carrying weapons.”
Councilman Oswald Feliz (D-Bronx), whose part of the district overlaps with the 46th, called for more police in a letter to then-Interim Police Chief Tom Donlon in September.
He argued that parts of the Bronx were “left behind” as violence increased.
“These are not just numbers; they also represent families traumatized by the horrors of violence,” Felix told The Post.
“We need more police in these communities, and we also need to consider laws that allow individuals to terrorize our communities in this way.”
Last month, Mayor Eric Adams announced a pilot program called “Every block counts,” which directs multi-agency resources to specific streets in Brooklyn’s 73rd District and the Bronx’s 46th District, where the highest number of shootings occurred citywide.
The administration said there has not been a single shooting or shooting incident along three thoroughfares of the Bronx — Morris Avenue, Elm Place and Walton Avenue — since the program launched in October. That compares to four shooting incidents in 2023, the city said.
A Bronx cop said the program, like others in the past, will do little to change gangbangers’ spiraling violence.
“This place has been plagued by crime for over thirty years. Politicians promise to provide services forever,” he denounced.
“Same story, everyone makes promises and nothing happens.”
An NYPD spokesperson said police are conducting “enhanced patrols” in high-crime areas in the District using “precision policing.”
“In the 46th Precinct, the NYPD has identified specific crime-fighting zones where officers are conducting increased patrols in higher crime areas to root out violence and disorder,” the spokesperson said.
“The NYPD is also taking alleged attackers off the streets and has made 29 homicide arrests in the 46 – an increase of 163.6% – while overall arrests are up 19.4%.”
Despite the arrests, the chaos has left locals feeling upset.
“[It’s] really bad,” said Gabby Almonte, who was visiting her mother in Mount Hope.
“Because you’re walking and you don’t know if you’ll get home.”
Additional reporting by Dorian Geiger and Craig McCarthy
