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- NATION, Page 49American NotesNEW YORK CITYChildren: In Harm's Way
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- Even New Yorkers, inured to their city's escalating
- violence, were shocked: four children dead just because they
- happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Veronica
- Corales, 9, was asleep in her parents' car. Yaritima Fruto, 1,
- was sitting in her mother's lap in an auto stopped in traffic.
- Ben Williams, 3, was asleep in his family's apartment. Rayvon
- Jamison, 9 months, was playing in a walker in his grandmother's
- kitchen. In a span of nine days, all were struck by random
- shots fired from 9-mm semiautomatic pistols, which have become
- the favorite weapon of drug runners and neighborhood gangs.
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- "There is no fistfighting anymore," complained a frightened
- neighbor of one of the victims. "If they have a confrontation,
- they go get their guns." Mayor David Dinkins vowed that his
- city "would not roll over" to the killers. But at week's end
- 14-year-old Shamel Knight was gunned down in a dispute over a
- moped.
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