A 14-year-old girl was killed by an unknown gunman Saturday night as she rode an M.T.A. bus in Queens, police said.

Daja Robinson had just boarded the Q6 bus at Sutphin Blvd. and Rockaway Blvd. on her way home from a friend’s Sweet 16 party when gunfire erupted outside. One of the bullets passed through the window and struck her in the head.

Robinson was rushed to Jamaica Hospital, where she was pronounced dead just after 9 p.m.

Two teenage female friends of the victim were on the bus with her at the time of the shooting. They told investigators they had left a birthday party at the nearby Onyx Lounge prior to boarding the Q6 and that there had been no disputes or arguments that might have led to violence.

Nine .40-cal shells were recovered outside of the bus, which was shot several times, police said.

No arrests have been made.

Danielle Tcholakian contributed reporting.

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Gun deaths in the city declined by more than 30 percent between 2000 and 2011, a new Health Department study shows.

There were 524 firearm-related murders in 2000, compared with 366 in 2011, according to the study. The nation overall saw no decline during the same period, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said in his radio address Sunday.

“Our success at keeping guns off our streets has meant that our city’s overall firearms fatality rate is less than half the rate in the rest of the country, and it’s markedly lower than that of other major cities,” Bloomberg said.

The number of injuries caused by guns during the same 11-year period also declined, falling 21 percent.

The mayor credited the city’s tough gun possession laws for the declines, as well as the “smart, proactive policing that makes it much more likely that if you break our city’s gun laws, you’ll be caught.”

Despite the fall in firearm deaths, gun violence remains a serious problem in the city, Bloomberg noted. Neighborhoods such as East New York, Crown Heights, Central Harlem and the South Bronx have the highest numbers of firearm deaths and injuries in the city, with rates twice the city’s average, the study found.

Firearms are also the leading cause of death for men aged 15 to 24 in those communities.

“We’re working every day to address this epidemic by targeting police resources where they’re most needed and implementing the same proactive law enforcement strategies that have proven so effective citywide,” the mayor said.

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This week marks National Crime Victims’ Rights Week, and the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office held their yearly VOICE OUT event to honor victims of violence. This year’s specific theme, gun violence, is especially timely given the defeat of several gun control measures in the U.S. Senate last week, as well as the mass shooting at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut shortly before Christmas.

District Attorney Charles J. Hynes, who regards his job as “an advocate for victims,” slammed the Senate for what he called “a total lack of courage.”

“The Senate shamefully failed us,” he said. “Not to pass legislation that would prevent guns from being in the hands of seriously mentally ill people or convicted felons, how in the name of God do they justify not voting for that legislation?”

Hynes said guns are responsible for an overwhelming majority of the homicides his office prosecutes.

“It’s always been 75 percent,” he explained. “When we were losing 760 people a year it was 75 percent; last year we went under 150 murders for the first time since 1960, but it’s still 75 percent.”

And according to Hynes, the vast majority of guns used in these crimes come from out of state, making federal legislation actually very relevant to the safety of New Yorkers.

“Now it’s really up to the public,” Hynes said. “I would hope that the people wherever these folks are from, wherever they represent, will stand up and say, ‘We need someone else to represent us.’”

The event’s three speakers had an intimate understanding of the ramifications of guns on New York City streets.

Robin Lyde lost her son Benny—a model oldest brother, she said—when he was 21 years old.

The night he was shot, she heard the gunfire from her bedroom.

“When I heard it, I was petrified because I had children downstairs,” she said. She ran into the living room to check on her young twins and their friends. “I looked at everyone and said thank you God, everyone is OK.”

But she was compelled to look outside, as the gunshot had been so close, and there she saw her eldest son in a pool of blood on the street.

Lyde said part of what keeps her going is the work she is doing to try to stop gun violence.

“I am out there begging our young people, our old people, not to pick up a gun, not to take lives,” she said.

Yvette Bell, with her daughter Nyree Stevens-Credle in a wheelchair besides her, spoke of the night Nyree was shot in the neck. The bullet lodged in Nyree’s spine and she was paralyzed from the neck down.

Nyree was in Brooklyn and her mother was in the Bronx when Bell got a 4 a.m. phone call from someone who said, “I don’t know who you are, but your daughter is lying in the street, she’s been shot.”

It was Christmas night and, unable to find a taxi, Bell took the longest train and bus trip of her life, she said, desperate to get to her daughter, worried she would die alone.

And Diana Carnival, whose husband was shot in an armed robbery at his car dealership, addressed women who may be going through what she went through.

“I’m sure you feel so lost right now,” she said, cautioning that the journey they faced would not be easy, that it will be a day-by-day process to get to “the light at the end of the tunnel.”

“Courage is the little voice at the end of the day that says I will do it again tomorrow,” she said.

Her children wanted to come to the event with her, they told her, because there would be other families like them there, and maybe other children too.

“It took this day for my children to realize that we are not alone in this situation, that there are other people like us,” Carnival said.

Ultimately, the event is meant to provide catharsis to those whose lives have been shaken by gun violence.

And it seems to work, as the women who spoke of their loss left the event smiling, touching one another’s shoulders, and calling out hellos to the DA staff who helped them through what many describe as an incomprehensible experience.

“Anytime you need me to speak anywhere,” Yvette Bell said, hugging District Attorney Hynes goodbye.

“You’re terrific,” he replied, holding her hand in both of his. “You’re very courageous.”

Follow Danielle Tcholakian on Twitter @danielleiat

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Mayor Michael Bloomberg will meet Thursday morning with the parents of Hadiya Pendleton, a Chicago teenager killed just days after she performed at President Obama’s inauguration in Washington, D.C.

Bloomberg will speak with her parents, Cleopatra Cowley-Pendleton and Nathaniel Pendleton, this morning at City Hall.

Pendleton, 15, was shot and killed in January in a park near her school.

Her parents recently filmed a television commercial for the mayor’s efforts against illegal firearms.

Bloomberg has been pushing for stronger gun laws for New York and the nation alongside his Mayors Against Illegal Guns group.

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Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper recently signed a package of contentious gun control bills while surrounded by family members of victims of the shootings in Aurora and Littleton.

According to the Denver Post, Tom Clements, 58, was appointed executive director of Colorado Prisons in January 2011.

Colorado police say they have no suspects, but prisons have been placed on a partial lock-down and security has been increased in the state capitol and governor’s home.

The laws the governor signed hours later require background checks for private gun sales and ban magazines with more than 15 rounds.

Hickenlooper called Clements’ murder “an act of intimidation.”

Follow Mary Ann Georgantopoulos on Twitter @marygeorgant

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On any given Monday or Wednesday afternoon, in a third-floor room in a church on Kingston Avenue, a group of 14- to 17-year-olds are gearing up for important work: tackling the issue of gun violence in their community. 

These teens are part of a group in Crown Heights called YO S.O.S. (Youth Organizing to Save Our Streets), and they all went through an application process to join a program that many of them say hits very close to home.

Mariama Barry, a ninth-grader at Wingate, a school nearby on Kingston, lives in Bed-Stuy and said she was motivated to join YO S.O.S. because of the shootings in her neighborhood.

“I’ve heard the gunshots and it’s really disturbing,” Mariama explained. “I wouldn’t want something like that to affect any of my family members.”

Claudlin Pierre Louis, 17, lives in East New York and is a senior in high school: “When I got to this program I wasn’t really an outspoken person, I was always quiet. When I’m nervous, I get quiet. But ever since I joined this I’ve learned how to become more of a leader: I speak out more, I stand for what I believe in more. It’s also helped me with my schoolwork because when we have presentations I can be more calm and speak up when I need to, I don’t stutter as much.”

This year, the group is putting together an Arts to End Violence Festival, and the teens are tasked with soliciting artwork from their classmates and friends by April 1. Led by YO S.O.S. Case Manager Ruby-Beth Buitekant, they discussed their outreach efforts at a recent Wednesday meeting.

Buitekant asks one girl, Imani, how she was able to be comfortable approaching people at school to be in the arts festival.

Imani explains that she strategically approached the kids she knew would be interesting in spoken word and performance, but added, “Why wouldn’t they want to speak up on something that affects all of us? We’re all teenagers and we all hear about people getting shot.”

This is true for nearly all of the kids in the room, including Rezziea “Rezzy” Alexander, 16, who said that not only has she lost friends to gun violence, she was recently almost shot near her home in Brownsville.

Rezzeia Alexander, 16, said, “Before I came here I was a hothead, everything would get me upset and I had a really bad temper. Because where I come from, we always resort to violence first and since I’ve been here it really changed my life. I don’t get as mad as I used to, I just walk away from certain situations, I let stuff roll off my back. Honestly, it really changed my life. Without SOS, I really don’t know where I’d be right now, to be honest.”

Rezzy insists that outreach programs like YO S.O.S. are the best way to decrease gun violence, and explains how the program has taught her to control her temper, and given her insight on how to “de-escalate situations and just walk away.”

“I think some people… don’t have much to live up to or live for, so it’s like going to jail or hurting somebody is what they know,” Rezzy said. “Some people just don’t have anybody to talk to about their problems or any way to release anger because that’s just how they grew up, that’s all they know.”

For those people, Rezzy says YO S.O.S. is the answer.

Funds running out

Amy Ellenbogen, Project Director at the Crown Heights Mediation Center, the parent group of YO S.O.S., said that they had so many people applying and bringing friends to YO S.O.S. this year they didn’t have enough space to let everyone into the program.

The kids who didn’t make it this year may not have another chance, unfortunately: YO S.O.S. is funded by a three-year grant from the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention at the Department of Justice that expires at the end of 2013.

Ellenbogen said they are working to find new funding to keep the program going.

Follow Danielle Tcholakian on Twitter @danielleiat

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