Photo via Reddit

Yesterday evening, Bushwick reminded us again that its violent past is not just a distant memory.

A man was shot in the face and killed on a Bushwick sidewalk at about 6:27 p.m., wrote DNAinfo last night. The shooting took place in front of 32 Park St near Beaver St when Dennis Sanchez, 39, was shot one in the head, say the cops.

Sanchez, who lived on Vanderveer Street in Bushwick, was taken to Elmhurst Hospital Center where he was pronounced dead.

A Redditor witnessed the murder from his window and posted the following AMA request (AMA means ask me anything in the Reddit community):

I’m 23. I live and work from my apartment in the Bushwick neighborhood of Brooklyn, NY. My girlfriend (22) and I moved here 16 months ago.

At 6:30PM, my girlfriend and I heard yelling from outside our window. There had been minor street fights twice earlier today, but no serious harm came of it (one car’s window was smashed with a bat). Both of those times I called 9-1-1 to report the event, and as I was calling to report this third occasion, my girlfriend and I watched one of the men at the center of the crowd pull out a gun and fire what I counted to be 8 shots into another man, hitting him in the face at least once, and killing him. There was a lot of screaming and people running for shelter, it was eerily similar to what you have been taught to expect from televised dramas.

As soon as the gunfire started, I pulled my girlfriend behind the couch. I spoke quickly to the 9-1-1 operator and ushered my girlfriend, crying, into the back room of our apartment.

Once I heard the sirens, I went back to the window to see THIS (shot from my iphone). They put the body on the stretcher, covered completely in a blanket. The ambulance did not go anywhere for ~30min, assumedly because there was… no rush.

I don’t know why, but I had the thought to see if anyone would be interested in an AMA from someone who just witnessed a shooting murder. I can’t imagine the opportunity occurs often.

I had never seen a murder before. I had seen people die, but in medical settings/hospice. I had never seen a violent death before.