Exterior of Raising Cane’s restaurant, 1501 Broadway, Aug. 10, 2025. (
)
A wild eruption of gunfire by an angry teenager wounded three people early Saturday morning, August 9.
The suspect, 17-year-old Jayden Clarke, has since been arraigned in New York Supreme Criminal Court on multiple attempted murder and weapons charges. At press time, he was being held on $200,000 bail.
It’s only by luck and the lousy marksmanship the results weren’t much worse, though they’re still plenty bad. In the skeletal language of official NYPD reports:
“At approximately 1:20 a.m, police heard shots fired at the corner of West 44th Street and 7th Avenue, within the confines of the Midtown South Precinct.
The victims include an 18-year-old female with a graze wound to the neck, a 19-year-old male with a gunshot wound to the right foot and a 65-year-old male with a gunshot wound to the left leg.
EMS responded and transported all of the victims to NYC Health and Hospitals / Bellevue and all are listed in stable condition.
As in most chaotic crime scenes, what actually happened took some time to ascertain but it appears that Clarke, a black male, was waiting to place an order at the Raising Cane’s chicken fingers restaurant at 1501 Broadway when, in the words of Manhattan prosecutor Sidney Balman, “an unknown male inside the restaurant came up to the ordering kiosk and exchanged words with the defendant.”
It’s believed that sometime prior to entering Raising Canes, Clarke had gotten into an argument with a CitiBike rider outside and that this somehow precipitated the confrontation inside.
When Clarke subsequently left Raising Canes, Balman explained, “The unknown male and other individuals followed shortly behind. While on 44th Street, the defendant pulled out a firearm, pointed it at the individuals coming out of the restaurant and fired three rounds.”
“The defendant hit one male who was part of the group in the restaurant that called him out, as well as other innocent bystanders.”
After his alleged gunfire, Clarke ran west on 44th Street, towards Carmine’s Italian restaurant, where a beat cop apprehended him and found a .380-caliber Glock 42 auto pistol in Clarke’s waistband, with one bullet left in its six-shot magazine.
It’s reported that Clarke’s mother is a city parks worker and that, with his mother present, Clarke waived his Miranda rights to talk to Midtown South detectives. At Clarke’s arraignment, both his mother and two brothers were present.
While prosecutors asked for no bail, a Legal Aid attorney requested bail of $10,000 cash bail, or $50,000 bond.
Judge Christopher Chin split the difference, setting bail at $200,000, and ordered that Clarke would have to wear a monitoring device if released.
A photo of Clarke, who is being chaged as an adult, shows a youthful, neat black male in a dark t-shirt, blue shorts, white socks and and Asics running shoes sitting on a wooden bench while a court officer stands over him.
Among the victims, a 19-year-old male CitiBike rider is believed to have been Clarke’s intended. target.
Two innocent bystanders include the 65-year-old man who was standing on the sidewalk and an 18-year-old tourist girl, who was riding in an Uber with her parents and twin 11-year-old siblings, when she was grazed in the neck by a stray bulletl
“It’s a very horrific experience,” the girl’s mom told the New York Post. “We decided to take our time to come to Times Square. We just felt that we would have a beautiful experience at night to see the whole city.”