NEW YORK, United States (AFP) – A seventeen-year-old boy opened fire and wounded three people in New York City’s heavily touristed Times Square early Saturday, the New York Police Department said.

The shooting occurred around 1:20 am (0520 GMT) following a “verbal altercation”, an NYPD spokesperson told AFP without giving further details.

An 18-year-old woman’s neck was grazed, while a 19-year-old man and a 65-year-old man’s lower limbs were injured, police said.

None of the injuries was considered to be life-threatening.

The three victims were taken to New York City’s Bellevue Hospital, where they were determined to be in stable condition.

“The perpetrator has been taken into police custody, and a firearm has been recovered,” the NYPD spokesperson added.

The suspect had not been formally charged.

The shooting occurred at 44th Street and Seventh Avenue, an intersection in the middle of the city’s theater district, which draws tens of thousands of tourists a day.

Earlier this month, the NYPD said shooting incidents and shooting victims in the city were at an all-time low for the first seven months of 2025.

“This isn’t luck. It’s the result of precision policing, relentless effort, and our dedicated officers,” it said in a post on X. “Fewer guns on the street, more lives saved.”

On July 30, a man armed with a semi-automatic rifle gunned down four people then killed himself as he rampaged through a skyscraper in Manhattan.

There have been 254 mass shootings in the United States this year including the Manhattan skyscraper incident, according to the Gun Violence Archive — which defines a mass shooting as four or more people shot.