A 16-year-old boy was robbed at gunpoint in broad daylight Thursday afternoon near Esplanade and Waring Avenue in the Bronx, with two unidentified suspects making off with roughly $25 before fleeing on foot. The robbery happened at approximately 2:40 p.m. within the confines of the NYPD's 49th Precinct, according to police.
According to NYPD Crime Stoppers, the two individuals approached the teen and demanded his property before one of them displayed a firearm. After taking the cash, the pair ran north on Esplanade, leaving the area on foot. The intersection sits within the 49th Precinct, headquartered at 2121 Eastchester Road and responsible for policing the East Bronx neighborhoods of Allerton, Pelham Parkway, Morris Park, Van Nest, Eastchester Gardens, and Pelham Gardens, per the NYPD.
🚨WANTED FOR A ROBBERY: On Thursday, August 20, 2026, at approximately 2:40 P.M., a 16-year-old male was in the vicinity of Esplanade and Waring Avenue, in the confines of the 49 Precinct in the Bronx, when two unidentified individuals approached and demanded his property. One of… pic.twitter.com/94HrZjkNgA
— NYPD Crime Stoppers (@NYPDTips) August 21, 2026
The stretch of Esplanade near Waring Avenue runs directly above the subway tunnel for the IRT Dyre Avenue Line, the 5 train, and is lined mostly with multi-family homes and small commercial storefronts, according to background compiled on Wikipedia. It functions as a key north-south residential corridor linking Pelham Parkway to Allerton Avenue, making it a heavily trafficked route for pedestrians at all hours.
A Precinct Bucking the Citywide Trend
Because one of the suspects displayed what appeared to be a firearm during the theft, the incident is being treated as Robbery in the First Degree under New York Penal Law Section 160.15(4) — a Class B violent felony that carries a mandatory state prison sentence of 5 to 25 years upon conviction, regardless of the small amount taken. That legal exposure applies to the suspects if and when they are caught, the statute shows.
The robbery adds to a troubling pattern in the 49th Precinct this year. NYPD CompStat data through August 2 shows robbery complaints in the command up 18.6% year-to-date, rising from 161 to 191 incidents compared to the same period in 2025 — even as robberies dropped more than 12% citywide, according to earlier Hoodline reporting on a failed necklace grab in the precinct in late July. Total major index crimes in the 49th Precinct also climbed 6.84% in 2025 versus 2024, reaching 2,266 reported incidents driven largely by robbery, burglary, and grand larceny auto, a command historically viewed as one of the Bronx's safer beats.
Just over two weeks before this robbery, a 77-year-old man was robbed at knifepoint inside a building elevator near Wallace Avenue and Pelham Parkway North, also within the 49th Precinct, when an unidentified suspect displayed a knife and stole his necklace before fleeing on a bicycle. That case, detailed in Hoodline's report on the elevator robbery, was likewise classified as First Degree Robbery due to the display of a weapon. The precinct also saw an armed robbery inside a wireless shop on White Plains Road in early July, an attempted necklace-grab robbery in late July, and a burglary in a Morris Park walk-up building in May.
Bronx-Wide Crime Pressures
The precinct's numbers echo a broader pattern across the borough. Major crime across the Bronx rose 1.4% year-over-year in 2024, reaching its highest total level since 2000 even as citywide crime dropped nearly 3%, according to a crime data analysis published by Vital City. Major violent crimes in the borough have remained more than 40% higher than pre-pandemic 2019 levels, per that same analysis.
How to Submit a Tip
NYPD Crime Stoppers is asking anyone with information about Thursday's robbery to come forward. Tips can be submitted by calling 1-800-577-TIPS, through the Crime Stoppers website, or via direct message to @NYPDTips on X; a Spanish-language hotline is also available at 1-888-57-PISTA (74782). Callers are never required to give their names or testify in court, and are instead assigned a code number to track any reward eligibility, according to the New York City Police Foundation, the independent nonprofit that funds and administers the reward program specifically to protect caller anonymity.
Tipsters can qualify for a cash reward of up to $3,500, but only if their information leads directly to both an arrest and a grand jury indictment of the suspect, per the terms of the program. Since its founding in 1983 as a public-private partnership, Crime Stoppers has helped solve more than 5,600 violent crimes citywide and approved over $3.4 million in cash rewards, including assistance in nearly 1,600 murder and attempted murder cases, according to the foundation.
It remains unclear whether surveillance footage from nearby residential buildings or entrances to the Dyre Avenue subway line has yielded any suspect descriptions, and police have not said whether the two individuals are believed to be connected to other recent armed robberies in the neighborhood.
