Two girls and a man who was sent home from a hospital with a bullet lodged in the back of his neck were the latest victims of senseless gun play — all cut down at a Bronx bodega.
Ricardo Acevedo, 47, was on a ladder replacing a security camera outside Astor Deli Grocery in Bronxdale just before 8 p.m. Thursday. He heard three or four gunshots and felt a sudden burn near the base of his skull.
“I felt a pain in my neck,” the married father of five said. “I reached back and touched my neck and saw blood all over my fingers.”
The wounded Acevedo stumbled to a salon where his wife works, about a block away from the shooting. He was taken to St. Barnabas Hospital and was released just two hours later with the slug still stuck in his flesh.
Acevedo said doctors at St. Barnabas told him to go to a clinic affiliated with the hospital on Monday. The bullet could be removed then.
“I’m not worried about it,” he said of the decision to release him from the hospital so soon after the shooting. “I feel okay. I don’t know anything about medicine. Since I felt okay, I listened to the doctors.”
Hospital officials declined to comment on the decision to send the wounded man home. Acevedo on Friday was just happy to be breathing.
“It’s a miracle I’m still alive,” he said. “I could have died from that shot.”
The gunman, believed to be a teen, ran inside the Astor Ave. bodega and squeezed off at least two more shots, Acevedo and cops said.
One bullet hit 15-year-old Aleah Detres in the hip; another pierced the leg of 12-year-old Mia Washington, relatives and friends said.
“I don’t know who he was shooting at,” said Aleah, who was in the store with friends to buy a soda. “He came in the store, looking crazy. We all ran and he started shooting.”
The Theodore Roosevelt High School sophomore said she ran inside a bathroom when she heard the shots and then realized she had been hit.
“I looked down and I saw blood all over my side,” she said.
Aleah and Mia were recovering from their wounds Friday at Jacobi Medical Center. The two girls were sharing the same room as doctors decided if surgery was needed to remove the bullet from Aleah’s side.
“I’m hanging in there,” Aleah said. “It was really shocking. . . I feel lucky, because if it was a bigger bullet, I don’t think I would have made it.”
Investigators believe the shooter was aiming for a person who was standing in a crowd outside the store. The gunman chased them inside when they tried to escape, sources said.
The suspect ran out of the store, leaving behind chaos and a flurry of bullets. No arrests have been made.
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