December 28, 2025 ALLERTON, THE BRONX — The seventh-floor hallway of a quiet apartment building became a kill zone on Saturday evening, leaving a community reeling and a 14-year-old child caught in the crossfire of a ruthless execution.
The clock hadn't even hit 6:30 p.m. when the deafening sound of gunfire tore through the halls of the Eastchester Gardens complex on Adee Avenue. When the smoke cleared, one man lay dead, and a teenager was left bleeding from gunshot wounds—the latest victims in a wave of violence that residents say has turned their homes into a war zone.
"I Saw Them Running"
Leon Stafford was inside his apartment, focused on his studies, when his front door became the backdrop for a murder.
"I heard a 'bang, bang, bang'—three times," Stafford recalled, the shock still visible. When he rushed to his door, he was met with a scene from a horror movie. He watched as three individuals scrambled toward the staircase to escape. In a chilling moment of survival instinct, Stafford had to physically push a man away who was desperately clutching his doorknob.
A Community Under Siege
For those living in the Allerton section of the Bronx, the sound of sirens is no longer a surprise—it’s a soundtrack. Stafford, who spends his days working security at a nursing home, says the irony of coming home to an unsafe environment is a bitter pill to swallow.
"This neighborhood is not the safest because of the gangs, kids hanging out, and the constant use of gun violence," Stafford said. He described a culture of fear where children are "chilling in the park" at midnight and gang activity has been a permanent fixture for two decades.
Another resident, known only as Ray, echoed the sentiment of a neighborhood lost to the streets: "We lost somebody young in front of the building like a year ago."
