Officials from the New York City Police Department are investigating a fatal shooting that took place early Tuesday morning on a SoHo street that is popular with designer and luxury shoppers.
Police officers responded to a 911 call at approximately 5:16 a.m. at 41 Greene Street outside of the Stone Island store. A 31-year-old man was found to be “unresponsive and unconscious,” having suffered a gunshot wound to the right thigh. EMS officials were called to the scene and the man was transported to NYC Health and Hospitals/Bellevue, where he was subsequently pronounced deceased, according to a NYPD spokesperson.
No arrests had been made as of Tuesday afternoon and the investigation is ongoing, the NYPD spokesperson said.
The identity of the deceased is being withheld, pending his family being notified.
Tuesday’s early-morning incident occurred hours before the neighborhood’s numerous stores, restaurants, businesses and residents are up-and-running. Despite that, several retailers did not open Tuesday, as police investigated the incident and cordoned off select areas with yellow crime scene tape.
A stretch of Greene Street that houses stores for Frame Denim, Staud and Theory remained shuttered Tuesday afternoon, according to an employee at the Frame Denim store, who declined further comment. Calls to Staud‘s and Theory’s Greene Street locations were unanswered, and media requests to all three companies were not immediately acknowledged. In addition, two spokespeople for Stone Island had not acknowledged a media request Tuesday afternoon.
The Stone Island location on Greene Street in SoHo.
Courtesy Photo
A NYPD spokesperson did not respond to a query asking if Tuesday’s shooting was a botched robbery, as reported by a few outlets.
Asked to compare the foot traffic in his neighborhood to a typical Tuesday, Brandon Zwagerman, deputy director of the SoHo Broadway Initiative, the business improvement district that oversees the Broadway corridor but not Greene Street, said via email, “Nothing looks particularly different here — bustling as [it would be on] a usual summer weekday.”
Retail occupancy is well above pre-COVID-19 levels in SoHo with Cartier, Dior, Acne Studios, Givenchy and The Webster among the tenants on Greene Street. The district had a 84 percent occupancy rate at the end of last last year, which marked a seven percent increase compared to 2022. Commercial rents are also on the rise in the area with the average rent on Prince Street in the first quarter of this year registering $1,073 per square foot — well above the Manhattan average of $688 per square foot, according to CBRE.
Tuesday’s early-morning shooting was the second fatal one in SoHo in the past six weeks. In early May, a 16-year-old boy was shot and killed at 2:30 p.m. in a public courtyard on Spring Street between Varick Street and Sixth Avenue.