A week after one of the bloodiest three days in the city's recent memory, relative calm returned to the streets this weekend.
Three people were killed between Friday evening and last night - a dramatic dropoff from the 11 slayings the previous weekend that led Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly to move hundreds of cops into crime hot spots in the Bronx, Brooklyn and Manhattan.
"It's great that things quieted down," said Brenda Moore, 34, as she walked along Fulton St. in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. "It makes me feel better to know that I don't have to worry about going outside with my children and getting caught up in some gunfight."
The violent spree over the previous weekend appears to have been a brief spike.
Murders are down about 8% this year, with 290 people killed through July 11 compared to 316 during the same period in 2003, the latest NYPD data show.
The city has averaged roughly 1.5 homicides a day, putting the NYPD on pace to push the murder rate to a low not seen in about four decades.
The first of this weekend's three killings took place around 8:30 p.m. Friday, when a 29-year-old Bronx woman pumped two bullets into her boyfriend inside their E. Tremont Ave. apartment, police said.
Cops found the weekend's second victim around 4:15 a.m Saturday in Brooklyn. Anthony Nastriano, 32, was gunned down inside the lobby of a Bedford-Stuyvesant building, police said.
And just after midnight yesterday in Harlem, a pint-size teenage gunman killed a 25-year-old man. The teen fired one bullet into the air, and then turned his pistol toward Robert Maybank, who was hit in the chest as he stood on W. 147th St., police said.
Maybank, who lived on the block, was rushed to Harlem Hospital, where he died shortly after the 12:40 a.m. shooting. The gunman was described by witnesses as about 5 feet tall, 120 pounds, and anywhere from 16 to 18 years old. It was unclear what sparked the fatal shooting.
The Brooklyn and Harlem killings occurred in precincts being targeted by the NYPD's recent shift in manpower.
Kelly decided to flood 14 precincts with extra cops at the time when most shootings take place, between 10 p.m. and 4 a.m.
Josephine Prado, 42, of Bedford-Stuyvesant, said she was happy to see the additional cops - but she also gave some credit to some dreary weather.
"The rain probably had something to do with it," she said. "Whatever it was, I'm happy. Safer is always better."