Dramatic Rise in Shootings in Manhattan South, Police Say View Full Caption

MANHATTAN — Fatal shootings are dramatically up in the southern part of Manhattan, and in most cases the killers were victims’ boyfriends, sons and co-workers, police said.

Manhattan South saw four shootings this year through February 19, according to the latest NYPD data. That's up from one in the same period last year in the area below 59th Street.

Two were murder-suicides: the January 25th killing of 38-year-old Moctar Sy by his colleague at Home Depot and the murder of pregnant Brandi Quijano, 26, by her boyfriend at the hotel where she lived, according to authorities.

Thomas Gilbert Jr., 30, shot and killed his hedge fund manager father, Thomas Gilbert Sr., on January 4 in his home.

The fourth shooting, of a 22-year old on the Lower East Side, did not result in death and has yet to be resolved, NYPD said.

On Monday, a fifth shooting killed rapper Shemrod Isaac outside the Lillian Wald Houses in the East Village. No one had been arrested for the crime as of Tuesday and the shooting was not included in the NYPD's latest crime statistics.

The city saw 62 family-related homicides in 2013, according to the Mayor’s Office to Combat Domestic Violence. While family-related murders have decreased along with all murders in the last decade, they have not gone down as sharply, growing from 12 percent to 18 percent of the city’s total murders, according to numbers from the MOCDV.

Professor Eric Piza of John Jay College, who specializes in policing and crime prevention, said it made sense that violence between people in relationships outpaced other shootings in Manhattan South this winter, given explanations for the decrease in overall shootings.

He said that policing strategies like “broken windows” techniques might prevent violence between strangers more than among relations.

“If you look at all the reasons [that crime has gone down], none of them really address the type of issues that you think would drive this kind of violence,” he said.

Gilbert’s lawyer declined to comment.