Details on the Drama Leading to Fatal Forsyth Shooting Last Week

It was some cross-Bowery beef that bubbled over ten days ago, resulting in the fatal shooting of Charlie Hernandez outside the Jose barber shop on Forsyth Street. Tensions between two neighborhood posses – one at Eldridge and Stanton, the other at Mott and Spring – began on the first of this year in Brooklyn with a car accident. Michael Wilson of the New York Times reports the following:

The way the Mott Street group tells it, the Eldridge group struck one of theirs, a boy named Noel, with a car. Nothing catastrophic, and the night went on — until the same Eldridge men returned for more.

“Instantly, Noel ran away,” a friend, one of several who spoke to me without giving a name, recalled this week. “We ran in the other direction.” The men from the car beat Noel with bats and bottles on Mott Street.

Joshua Nunez, the suspected murderer, belonged to the Stanton crew, and was reportedly involved in a June altercation in which Charlie’s cousin Kelvin Hernandez was chased through Little Italy. His own retaliation resulted in an assault charge and plea with cops. Onward…

Nine days ago, a Mott Street man named Ryan was in a little playground at Spring and Mulberry Streets. “They just came in,” Ryan said. “They said, ‘Yo, get off the bike and take the backpack off.’ I got six staples in my head. I got hit with a Snapple bottle.”

Two days later, a Saturday, there was a birthday party for Charlie’s young niece. There was fear of another attack.

Charlie got a call. Joshua Nunez was playing cards at Jose Beauty Salon and Barber Shop on Forsyth. Charlie left Spring Street.

“If that kid was there,” Kelvin Fernandez said, “he was going to give him a beating.”

And the rest is history. Nunez is still at large and Hernandez is six feet under.

Dozens of Boogie commenters alluded to possible drug influences behind the crime, yet police are claiming otherwise.

Some readers divulged their fears of returning to the barber shop for a trim, which surely does not bode well for the business.