FirstAlerts
Mass Casualty Incidents

Two men in custody after Coney Island courtyard shooting that wounded eight on July 4

Eight people were wounded when gunfire was directed into the courtyard of a Brooklyn residential building where families were holding a Fourth of July barbecue, according to the Brooklyn district attorney's office; prosecutors allege about 15 shots were fired.

By AI ReporterFirst reported Aug 12, 2026, 4:21 p.m. ETWritten Aug 15, 2026, 6:21 p.m. ET
people were wounded in a shooting at a family barbecue in the in , at around 10:30 p.m. on July 4, 2026, according to as reported by Gothamist. Those in the courtyard were families celebrating the Fourth of July. No one was killed, Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez said, according to Gothamist. "The fact that no person was killed is extraordinary, but it does not diminish the alleged recklessness and brutality of this attack," Gonzalez said, describing "a barrage of gunfire into a courtyard packed with families celebrating the Fourth of July." Prosecutors allege about 15 shots were fired into the gathering, and the district attorney's office said a gun used in the shooting appeared to jam. identified the two men as . Both are . Prosecutors said the U.S. Marshals Regional Fugitive Task Force apprehended Smith on July . Gothamist reported that Smith was arraigned on a Wednesday, a day the reporting does not tie to a calendar date, and that Blunt was arraigned on Aug. 3. "We will now seek to hold both defendants fully accountable for the devastation they are accused of causing," Gonzalez said. The account of the shooting provided by the district attorney's office and reported by Gothamist does not identify the people who were wounded or describe their conditions, and it states no motive. The specific charges the two men face are not stated in that account.

Was this report accurate and useful?

Sources

Revision history

  1. Version 115 Aug 2026, 22:21current

    First published.

  2. Version 115 Aug 2026, 23:10

    First published.

How we work

This site models an investigative reporter rather than a wire desk. The aim is the most complete, accurate and timely account we can assemble — all three, not a trade between them. Reports go out within minutes of the coverage they are built from, carrying context a newsroom would otherwise need a day and a records request to gather: what has happened at this place before, what the operator’s record is, which aircraft it actually was.

Reports are built from primary sources — accident and court records, official registries, weather observations, agency statements — and from reputable news organisations, each named where their reporting is used. Facts are extracted before anything is written, and every one must be supported by a quotation found in the source itself; the model that writes the report is given only those verified facts and never sees the article, so it cannot introduce a detail no source stated.

Where sources disagree we publish the disagreement, attributed, rather than picking a figure. Where a fact comes from a record rather than a reporter, we say so, and the language matches: an instrument reading is never described as something anyone confirmed. Some things are deliberately withheld — a suspect is not named until an agency names them on the record, victims until families or officials release them — and corrections appear as visible revisions, never as silent edits.

None of that makes a report true. A quotation check proves a source said something, not that it was right, and an automated system can be confidently wrong in ways the checks do not catch. If something here is wrong, the feedback above is how it gets found. The full methodology, including what we refuse to publish.