2 Hurt in Shooting at N.Y. School

A teenager opened fire in the hallway at a high school near Lincoln Center on Tuesday, seriously wounding two students in what authorities said may have been a dispute over a girl.

The shooting on Manhattan’s Upper West Side occurred at Martin Luther King Jr. High School on what would have been the 73rd birthday of the apostle of nonviolence. The public school has 3,000 students.

Schools Chancellor Harold Levy at first said the shooting may have been gang-related, but later said authorities believed the shooting was because of a dispute concerning a girl. He said the suspect was an 18-year-old who had not been attending school.

No arrests had been made in the case by Tuesday evening, police spokesman Lt. Brian Burke said.

“We were in school and we heard two gunshots,” said senior Romain Morrison, 17. “They were telling everyone to get out of the hallways.”

Authorities said Andrel Napper, 17, and Andre Wilkins, 18, were shot from behind in a fourth-floor hallway. One was wounded in the back and the other in the buttocks. Both were hospitalized Tuesday night; one was in serious condition and the other was listed as stable.

Wilkins’ father, Wadell Parks, said he was grateful his son wasn’t paralyzed.

“The only thing we’ve got to deal with now is this issue of how this other child, because he’s a child as well, got into the school with a gun and was able to try to kill my son and another of his classmates,” Parks said.

A .380-caliber handgun was found on the fifth floor, along with three shell casings, authorities said.

Students were kept in their classrooms as police swept the building on Amsterdam Avenue between 65th and 66th streets.