Teenage sisters stabbed, one fatally, during fight outside New York grocery store

March 17 (UPI) — Two teenage sisters were stabbed, one fatally, during a fight outside a New York deli early Sunday morning, New York police said.

Police responded to a 911 call about an assault in progress outside the Slope Natural Plus grocery store on the corner of St. Mark's Place and Fourth Avenue in the Park Slope neighborhood of Brooklyn around 2 20 p.m.

“Upon arrival, officers observed a 19-year-old woman with a stab wound to the chest and a second 19-year-old woman with an injury to her arm,” a police spokesperson said in a press release.

The teenage sisters were taken by ambulance to a local hospital, where one was pronounced dead and the other remains in stable condition. No arrests have yet been made and identification of the victims remains pending notification to families.

The sisters were named Samiya and Sanyia Spain twins by WABC. They were allegedly stabbed when they fought off the advances of a drunk man while ordering beef patties. WABC reported Samiya Spain as the victim.

The homicide came just hours after a 61-year-old man, parked illegally outside a Shell gas station in Brooklyn's East Flatbush neighborhood, was allegedly killed by a 30-year-old tow truck driver after a dispute.

NYPD crime statistics, last recorded on March 10, show there have been 55 murders in 2024, compared to 73 at the same point in 2023, a decrease of nearly 25%.

Transit crimes on the city's subways increased 13 percent over last year. But despite New York Governor Kathy Hochul's deployment of 750 National Guard troops to the city's subways to combat the rise of illegal immigration, most serious crimes in the city have declined significantly since the time of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The number of rapes is down by 8.4% and burglaries by 13.3%. The number of gunshot victims decreased by almost 20% and the number of gunshot incidents decreased by 17%.

Aside from transit crimes, the only other crimes included in the statistics that are up year-on-year are thefts, up 5.4%; criminal assault, up 1.8%; and criminal assaults, up nearly 10%. And petty theft increased by less than a percentage point.