Photo by eddzis, courtesy of Flickr Creative Commons

Just days after a teen punched a cop in the face and a group of teens attacked a lifeguard at McCarren Park Pool, more teenage violence  struck the Williamsburg park last week when a 16-year-old was stabbed and beaten close to death by a group of other high schoolers.

A Walk in the Park reported that the victim, whom most news sources are identifying  only as Carlos to avoid a repeat of the incident, was chased from a soccer field around the park by a group of about eight teens just before 9:30 p.m. last Friday. The group surrounded him by a baseball field and began their attack.

A couple was seated on a bench right next to the beating. “They were swinging baseball bats, punching him and throwing things. They hit him with a bottle. It was the whole group, everybody was getting their punches in. They seemed hell bent on killing this kid,” one of the witnesses told A Walk in the Park.

The witness called 911, and the attackers fled when they were told the police were coming. Carlos was attacked twice more by onlookers who pretended to come to his aid, however, before he was finally left alone, other witnesses said. He was taken to Bellevue Hospital, where he received 27 stitches and four staples in his head.

Three men have since been arrested for the attack: Seth Martinez, 16, and Kenny Nunez, 15, and Argenis Zarzuela, 18. Each has been charged with attempted murder, gang assault, criminal possession of a weapon and menacing. They are due in court today.

The attack has sparked criticism from community members, including Carlos’s mother, for the park’s lack of police. Both NYC Parks and the NYPD  have no officers assigned to the park — or, for that matter, almost all other parks — as permanent posts.

“There’s not enough protection in that park,” Carlos’s mother told WPIX.  “And thanks be to God, it’s a miracle from God that he made it.”

The newly reopened McCarren Park Pool is having a few problems more severe than the occasional toddler screaming. The park, amidst an array of criminal problems, was shut down for the second time since its $50 million opening last Thursday, The Huffington Postreports.

The park prior to renovations - photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

After a three-year closure and a highly anticipated renovation from Brooklyn residents, recurring fighting and thievery from the pool’s provided lockers has forced closures and certainly doesn’t portend favorably for the park’s future.

On Monday, three arrests were made after an assault on two police officers trying to enforce the pool’s “no backflip” rule. One officer was punched in the face while another was injured on the wrist, the Huffington Post reports.

On the prior Friday, the park was forced to close merely hours after its grand reopening because of an attack on a lifeguard that results in shed blood and almost resulted in the lifeguard’s death, said the same report.

Also, in a more recent report by Gothamist and NYC Park’s Advocate Geoffrey Croft, just a little bit before Monday’s assault, four lockers in the pool’s locker room were broken into, resulting in at least one purse’s disappearance. There are cameras throughout the facility, but not on the locks, one police officer told Geoffrey Croft.

This all comes after a huge project, part of PlaNYC, by Mayor Bloomberg and the parks department to restore the site back to a pool —like it was in 1983— after it was a popular Brooklyn music venue for many years.

It seems a bit odd that the same site continuously seems to be a victim of violence, especially with its ambition to be a family-friendly park, and people are voicing their opprobrium on Twitter.

Hopefully McCarren can clean up its act, or the acts of the people using it, but even I’d pick another pool for now. Poops are less scary than punches.

–Nick Gallinelli