The Bronx Ink

Aviles looks on as his colleague prepares for a customer in a Bronx barber academy.

Charles Aviles, a 36 year-old Bronx resident, will always remember his mother’s childhood friend Ronnie when he thinks about growing up during the 1980s. Ronnie had treated Aviles like a son, helping him with things like tying his sneakers.

“He had one of those million-dollar smiles, like nothing ever bothered him,” he said.

But when Aviles was just 10-years-old, Ronnie passed away suddenly. That was when Aviles first became aware of AIDs. The global epidemic continued to rage throughout Aviles’s childhood years and into the early 1990s.

HIV and AIDs rates have decreased globally since the peak of the epidemic in the 1980s, and earlier this month, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced that the number of HIV diagnoses in the state had declined by 28 percent since 2014. But that doesn’t mean progress is evenly spread: just as the Bronx was disproportionately affected during the crisis’s peak, today it is one of the Center for Disease Control’s 45 HIV hotspots across the country.

There are several factors that feed into the “invisible crisis” of HIV in the south Bronx, according to Dr. Vincent Guilamo-Ramos, director of the Center for Latino Adolescent and Family Health. HIV rates are higher among Latino and African American populations, which disproportionately populate the borough. There are also generally higher rates of HIV among men under 25 years old, particularly those who are gay and bisexual. The Bronx also has the largest youth population of any of New York’s five boroughs. Language and cultural differences also play a role.

Both government and non-profits have been trying to address the issue with outreach programs tailored to specific demographics.

For example, hair care professionals were one of the groups identified by the CDC as potential partners for its Business Response to AIDs initiative, which began in 1992. The program partners with businesses, health departments, community based organizations and government agencies to provide public education on HIV. As barbers in New York are already required by state law to receive training on contagious disease transmission associated with their professional duties, training centers for hair care professionals were an obvious group to incorporate into the program.

Aviles, who is training to become a barber at the Beyond Beauty & Barber Academy in the Bronx’s Westchester Square neighborhood, is also being trained to talk to people about HIV. For Aviles, it’s important not just to have practical knowledge about safe barber practices – sanitizing equipment, taking care with pimples and open wounds – but also about how the community provided by space can facilitate difficult talks.

“Barbershops are the places where you let loose, where you want to be able to talk sometimes and at home you can’t really have certain conversations,” he said. “But when the fellas are around, it’s a great environment to have certain conversations.”

But despite efforts like the CDC’s, there are several reasons that HIV rates remain high across the Bronx today.

There are fewer health services in the area than elsewhere in the city, and Latinos and African Americans are disproportionately uninsured, or have inadequate coverage. For many, that means that PrEP, a highly effective antiretroviral drug, often isn’t available to them. Bronx residents generally have lower incomes than in other parts of the city, Dr Guilamo-Ramos said, and other expenses might seem more urgent than medication for a chronic health condition.

People also feel scared about going into formal spaces like hospitals or clinics to take an HIV test test, said Daniel Leyva, the Latino Commission on AIDs’s press secretary. This discomfort can be especially prevalent among Latinos and people of color, who can feel socially and culturally excluded in places like sexual health clinics.

“It’s really sad to see that a lot of people in our community are still dealing with so much stigma,” said Ivan Ribera, a community engagement specialist at Latino Pride Center whose daily work involves approaching people to talk about HIV prevention.

All of this has grave consequences for the Bronx. The borough’s rate of premature deaths from HIV was twice as high as the New York City average in 2018, according to Community Health Profile data., which put the Bronx’s rate at 12.3 deaths per 100,000 compared to Brooklyn’s 6.4 and the New York City average of 5.9. In total, the Bronx saw 792 premature deaths from HIV last year.

Moreover, the South Bronx itself is a pocket with much higher HIV death rates than anywhere else in New York City. Morrisania, Mott Haven and Hunts Point were among the worst-affected areas.

Dr. Guilamo-Ramos has piloted a number of pioneering outreach and education programs in recent years, but described youth infection rates as a “raging epidemic”. As a result, two of the programs he runs – Families Talking Together and Fathers Raising Responsible Men – target teenagers and work with families to communicate on the issue.

Ribera said he talks to approximately eleven people a week on an individual basis as part of his outreach work, and that much of it involves trying to get people to use condoms. “There’s this idea that NYC condoms don’t work,” he said, alluding to rumors that condoms issued by the city’s Health Department are faulty. “So we try to push condoms, to eliminate those patterns.” In addition to approaching people in the street, Ribera and the Latino Pride Center produce discreet boxes filled with a range of differently-sized and -flavored condoms and leave them in places like barbershops.

Churches are another space being leveraged to offer a culturally-specific outreach service, due to their standing in minority communities and the close personal relationships they often cultivate in areas such as the Bronx.

“Churches are becoming a mediator between communities and its services people who are nervous about seeking services somewhere else,” said Leyva, adding that they can be particularly important for people who don’t see themselves as a part of at-risk groups or who don’t realize the breadth of health services they are entitled to use. “At the end of the day, it’s about promoting safe spaces for people to discuss sensitive issues.”

In Aviles’s mind, the necessary outreach work to combat HIV in the Bronx shouldn’t pose as many challenges as it appears to. “It doesn’t mean you got the cooties or anything like that. You’re just a normal person,” he said. “Things happen.”

One August weekend, a dozen 18- and 19-year-olds filed into a large, former industrial building in the South Bronx for a class on how to better manage their money. Once a factory where pennies were minted and paper money was printed in the early 20th century, the landmark Hunts Point BankNote building found a new purpose in 2014 when it was converted into office spaces.

And for two full summer days, an entrepreneurship incubator inside the former money factory became a boot camp about the 21st century’s answer to currency woes: cryptocurrency, a form of digital currency that allows people to make financial transactions without using a bank.

Cryptocurrency allows individuals to make peer-to-peer transactions whose authenticity is verified by a network of computers rather than a third-party institution like a bank. People using cryptocurrency can use digital wallet apps to pay for goods and services.

It’s often heralded as a solution for developing countries where banks are scarce, but Morrisania high school teacher Carlos Acevedo argues that the cryptocurrency industry could have just as much impact closer to home.

“My point of view was that you don’t need to go that far,” said Acevedo, who lives in the suburbs of New York and has taught English in the Bronx high school for the last seven years. “You’re four miles from the World Trade Center, and this is the unbanked right here.”

Acevedo hopes that the technology can help Morrisania and East Tremont, where 28 percent of the residents don’t have bank accounts, according to a 2013 study from the Urban Institute. That can mean paying additional fees when cashing checks or paying bills, and a higher likelihood to turn to predatory lenders in times of financial difficulty.

The Bronx has adopted cryptocurrency faster than almost anywhere else in New York because banks are so scarce, said Leighton Banton, a program assistant at BXL, an entrepreneurship incubator inside BankNote that hosted Acevedo’s class for the weekend.

“There are so many corporations that say they can’t make their way out here,” Banton said. “But I see people using Bitcoin ATMs all the time. They have more faith in the cryptocurrency than in the actual financial systems we have.”

The idea for this crypto boot camp came two years ago when Acevedo realized that even his most diligent Advanced Placement English students knew nothing about managing their personal finances. Many of his students’ parents had no bank accounts.

He began teaching voluntary classes after school hours to help them learn about bank accounts, credit cards and money management.

“Eighty to 90 percent of my students will have talked about having to send money home to family members,” said Acevedo, “or not being able to have a credit card, or having to pay money to get to a bank branch because they don’t have one near them.”

Acevedo said that in addition to a lack of financial knowledge among his students, there’s a noticeable absence of banks in the Bronx. In the four-mile stretch that he commutes every day, from Fordham University to the high school he teaches at in Morrisania, he barely sees any branches.

Despite more than two dozen ATMs, there are just six bank branches in his corner of the South Bronx, including one municipal credit union. Even other South Bronx neighborhoods are better served than Morrisania: Pelham Bay has 10 bank branches, eight of which are only a few hundred meters apart. By comparison, Manhattan’s Upper West Side has 38 branches.

“People get the short end of the stick and they don’t know what to do,” said Tashima Lee, one of the boot camp’s attendees and a former Acevedo student who became interested in cryptocurrency after one of the teacher’s financial lessons. “And they end up spending money because they burn it in a flash.”

For South Bronx residents, it made sense to find alternative ways to make essential financial transactions – like cashing a salary check – that didn’t involve paying to take public transport, or relying on restrictive opening hours.

Cryptocurrency provides a different way for South Bronx residents to make their financial transactions where banks are most scarce; despite the short time that the technology has been around, there are already seven cryptocurrency ATMs in Morrisania alone.

As a part of his education initiative, the Crypto Community Project, Acevedo rounded up eleven industry leaders from national firms including the Electric Coin Company and Gemini to speak to his former students about cryptocurrency and blockchain technologies (which underpin the security of cryptocurrency transactions) for a two-day boot camp.

In addition to lectures, the class gave students the chance to put theory into practice, using a digital wallet to purchase ice cream at the local ANC theater.

Leighton Banton said Acevedo’s initiative means that Bronx residents have a chance at becoming active participants rather than just consumers with cryptocurrencies.

“There are so many corporations that say they can’t make their way out here,” Banton said. “But I see people using Bitcoin ATMs all the time. They have more faith in the cryptocurrency than in the actual financial systems we have.”

Banton said Acevedo’s initiative means that Bronx residents have a chance at becoming active participants rather than just consumers with cryptocurrencies.

“Black and brown Bronx kids can get a $100,000 job without college if they apply themselves to this,” said Banton. “I know that someone from that program is going to be a millionaire one day, because of something they learned here.”

Jemima Joseph, an 18-year-old former Acevedo student, said that while she hadn’t spent the cryptocurrency during the workshop, she sees the potential it offers for when it comes to sending money to family outside of the U.S. She hopes that one day it will make it easier and cheaper for her to send money to relatives in Togo and Nigeria.

“This isn’t a short-term accomplishment,’ she said, when asked what the practical use of cryptocurrencies to her now. “It will take a while, but I see it gaining momentum.”

Barbara Alicea, a new school health coordinator speaking to a parent via cell phone outside P.S. 140, the pilot site of a national health and learning initiative. (SWATI GUPTA / Bronx Ink)

Elpida Vlachos routinely takes her four children who attend Morrisania’s P.S. 140 on Eagle Avenue for regular doctor check ups. She said she felt confident that none had health problems. So it came as a surprise to the 38-year-old Bronx mother when her children came home one day from school with a note indicating they needed eyeglasses.

P.S. 140 in the South Bronx, an elementary school is the site of a new, national pilot program intended to make sure that students who need treatment for everything from poor vision to chronic asthma receive holistic health care coordinated at the school level. Called Healthy and Ready to Learn, the initiative was launched in September by Children’s Health Fund in three schools, two in the South Bronx and one in Harlem.

All the students in P.S. 140 who failed the vision screening are expected to be provided with two pairs of glasses – one to keep in school and one for home. These children will meet with an optometrist for free and choose the glasses they like, said Barbara Alicea, the school’s health coordinator, who acts as liaison between the health center and the school to bring together local health services for the children.

Also known as the “eye lady” in the school, children rush to hug Alicea as she explained her role. As health screenings continue in the school, Alicea will work with parents to help connect them to  basic needs like housing, insurance, public assistance, domestic violence and immigration issues.

Poor vision is just one of eight health-related barriers to good learning identified in this new initiative aimed at helping schools, parents and health center practitioners triage knowledge and treatment. According to a study conducted by The Center for Health and Health Care in Schools,  an estimated 22 per cent of children aged 6 to 11 have a vision problem.

The eight health issues to be targeted by the Healthy and Ready to Learn program include asthma, dental issues, hearing loss, hunger, behavioral problems, anemia and lead poisoning. Phoebe Browne, the director of the initiative, said that the organization chose these eight issues because they are fairly common, relatively easy to screen, preventable and manageable. The program will measure these health indicators over time next to school measures such as attendance and test scores to assess the program’s impact over time.

Once a child is identified with a particular health issue, the parents are informed and coordination will begin to provide the child with primary care. The program’s next hurdle is to figure out a way to screen for anemia and lead poisoning in school, two conditions that require blood tests to diagnose. “We do not provide primary care, but our school health coordinator will help the family to connect to primary care,” said Colby Kelly, communications director at the Children’s Health Fund.

P.S. 140’s assistant principal believes teachers are pleased to be part of this pilot. “We are monitoring the effects of the program,” said Assistant Principal Kevin Greene. “Eventually, over time, the teachers and parents will see the benefits.” The two other schools in the pilot are P.S. 49 in Mott Haven and P.S. 36 in West Harlem.

Finding local resources for the parents such as dentists, optometrists and primary care physicians is another work in progress. The next step after vision screening in P.S. 140 will be dental check ups and training for asthma control, Alicea said.

Children play outside the main building of P.S. 140 on Eagle Avenue. (SWATI GUPTA / Bronx Ink)

Poorly controlled asthma is one of the leading reasons children miss school through exhaustion or hospitalization.

Tonette McWilliams, a teacher at P.S. 140, said that she had a student who used to miss an entire week at a time due to chronic asthma since she had to be hospitalized. Severe attacks cannot be treated at home or in the school clinic. Under the new program, once a student has been identified with average or chronic asthma, the school health coordinator will work with the family to provide educational materials and training to train them in avoiding environmental triggers and exercising caution in physical activities. .

“We are looking for a scalable solution to these problems,” Kelly said. “Parents do not know about the triggers and it is a process of discovery, finding out the why.”

Asthma and behavioral problems represent the top two health barriers to learning, according to a 2013 survey of principals and assistant principals administered by the Children’s Health Fund and the city’s school supervisor’s union. In high poverty schools, 67 per cent of school officials identified asthma as a moderate or serious barrier to learning.

“P.S. 140 is located in the poorest congressional district in the country and there are social issues related to poverty and lack of insurance,” Green said. “We felt that having this program would provide us with assistance in some of the issues.”

Around 18 to 20 percent of P.S. 140’s 640 pre-kindergarten through fifth grade students live in homeless shelters; a few more live in foster care homes or transitional housing, said Greene.  As he spoke, a school administrator, Tuesday Brown, brought in a five-year-old boy who was extremely agitated. Greene reassured the child, and returned him to Brown after five minutes, saying he was a cancer survivor, who suffers from hyperactivity.

“Realistically, some students have underlying issues,” said Greene. “To get them ready for high school, college and future careers we have to work hard and build their self esteem and that is where Children’s Health Fund comes into play.”

Health and Ready to Learn is funded by international organizations like H&M Conscious Foundation, Jaguar Land Rover and individual donors. Both corporations have committed to providing the funds that are required for the screenings, trainings and equipment. P.S. 140 is currently working without corporate funding but Children’s Health Fund is in the process of identifying donors. Along with funding partners, it is collaborating with various organizations and experts who are providing valuable data and research.

Children chat with each other as they walk out of school on a Thursday afternoon. (SWATI GUPTA / Bronx Ink)

The Children’s Health Fund was co-founded 27 years ago by singer/songwriter Paul Simon and Columbia University’s Dr. Irwin Redlener. The organization set up two dozen national network programs and 50 mobile units that bring medical care to children in poor neighborhood. One of the oldest national networks is located in the South Bronx in partnership Montefiore Medical Center and the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. The South Bronx Health Center located at 871 Prospect Ave, provides a medical home for underserved children and families.

Healthy and Reading to Learn was launched in response to the need to do more to reach out to more children who need care. Hospitals and mobile vans proved to be insufficient. Organizers believed that going directly into public schools was the next logical step.

School officials at P.S. 140 hope the program will help improve attendance rates, which were 89 percent last year. The goal is to reach 93.5 percent, said McWilliams. “When it comes to education, I’ll try anything,” said Ligia Perez, a second grade teacher at P.S. 140. “And if this program can help then I am on board.”

“If something is going to work,” said Greene, “it can be only through communication between the teachers, parents and the community.”

Hungry Bird on East 164th Street, the newest restaurant to open in Morrisania, introduces Indian cuisine to the neighborhood for the first time. (SWATI GUPTA / The Bronx Ink)

A steady stream of customers wandered into Morrisania’s Hungry Bird one September evening, drawn inside the brand new restaurant accompanied by the unusual aroma of curried chicken. Indian cuisine was practically unknown on East 164th Street and Morris Avenue until local entrepreneur, Azizur Rahman, decided to open the quaint eatery three weeks earlier.

Wooden spoons hung on the painted walls behind him as the 47-year-old owner, originally from New Delhi, India greeted his customers.

Rahman’s life-long dream had been to introduce Morrisania to his native cooking. In addition to traditional Indian dishes, he plans to include Dominican and American menu items to ease the transition. “One step in, and people can get whatever they want,” said Rahman.

Local residents know Rahman as the manager of Dunkin’ Donuts four blocks away on 161st Street, where he has been working for the last 15 years. His plans to set up his own business finally took shape two years ago when his family in India was able to provide $100,000 in start-up capital. His younger sister Sabrina Khan and her husband Mahatab Hussein help out with the cash register and overseeing the kitchen.

The Hungry bird stands out among the very few restaurants that are scattered around a neighborhood mostly populated with grocery stores and 99 cent stores.

Small businesses have been opening up slowly in Morrisania in the past few years. According to the 2012 U.S. Census, the number of restaurants has nearly doubled in the South Bronx between 2010 and 2011.

Michael Nixon, a business development officer at the Bronx Overall Economic Development Corporation said that his office received around 10 to 15 requests for new business loans every month. Most of those businesses like Rahman’s, he said, are financed by a close network of friends and families,.

Rahman, who immigrated to New York 16 years ago, still works at Dunkin’ Donuts, putting in 18-hour days working two jobs, and commuting back and forth from Brooklyn where he lives with his wife and two teenage children. His normal workday begins at 6 a.m. at Dunkin’ Donuts, and ends at 11 p.m. after he closes Hungry Bird. It’s a schedule he believes will pay off eventually. Early customer counts have already exceeded his early projections. He planned for 40 food orders a day and is currently seeing 70.

One customer agreed to talk only after he wiped his plate clean of the chicken and rice. As he paid his check, Sylla Boubacar said he was going to keep coming. “It is just the beginning,” said Boubacar, a long-time Morrisania resident.

Rahman has depended mostly on discount offers, incentives for referrals and word of mouth to encourage local residents to come through the door. Besides his family members, Rahman hired two local residents to distribute menus to passersby and do deliveries. One man, 43-year old Jeff Hargrove, is studying to become a food inspector eventually.

Rahman believes that one of the reasons his opening weeks have gone so well is the generosity from the people in the neighborhood. “People have been forthcoming whenever I have asked for help,” he said.

When asked why he chose the name “Hungry Bird”, he paused and said, “A bird has no job besides finding food. So, when humans get hungry, their characteristic changes to mimic a bird.”

The Bronx District Attorney charged three robbery suspects with homicide in the death of bodega worker Reynaldo Cuevas, shot by police as he tried to flee the robbers. SADEF A. KULLY/Bronxink)

The family of the bodega worker shot and killed by a police officer two weeks ago reacted with strong emotions yesterday as they faced in court the three suspects accused of robbing the Morrisania grocery.

Police claim the officer shot 20-year-old Reynaldo Cuevas by accident when Cuevas ran out Natalie Deli and Grocery on the street in the Bronx and collided with Officer Ramysh Bangali.

All three suspects–Orlando Ramos, 31, Ernesto Delgado, 28, and Christopher Dorsey, 17–have been charged not only with robbery but with the murder of Cuevas. All three suspects have pleaded not guilty.

After the first, and the youngest, suspect appeared in court, the Cuevas family left the courtroom and burst into tears, holding each other and crying as Assistant District Attorney Theresa Gottlieb tried to explain the case to them.

One family member was so hysterical that she needed medical attention explained a court officer in the court hallway.

The Assistant District Attorney had no comments on the case and family members did not speak to the press.

The case has stirred some already heated emotions in the community against the New York City Police Department. 

The Cuevas family did not stay behind for Ramos and Delgado’s court appearances. Delgado smiled and winked at his family members who sat in the back of the courtroom.

The suspects were assigned Judge Miriam Best to oversee the trial, and their next court date was scheduled for Oct 26^.

Up in the attic of St. Augustine’s Church in Morrisania, Danny Torres, 46, looked through papers and files scattered across the floor. Torres, a fine arts teacher at Cardinal Hayes High School and Morrisania native, now lives in Queens, but often visits his mother who still resides a few blocks away in the house were he grew up. “This was the mother church of the South Bronx and this here is history going out the window,” he said, as he picked up a torn marriage certificate from the floor. Among papers that will soon be garbage, Torres rescued the original blueprints of the church, which he plans to frame.

The century-old church is a landmark on Franklin Avenue. The façade of the building is beautiful and inviting, but on the inside, the roof  is falling and the walls are crumbling. After years of attempts to save the church, long time parishioners are saying their final goodbyes. The building is scheduled for demolition this month.

During Mass on Aug. 19, the Rev. Thomas Fenlon invited parishioners who now attend services a mile west at Our Lady of Victory to go into St. Augustine’s for the last time and take any remaining items to sell or to keep.

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Among those who accepted that invitation was Brother Giles Naedler. “For me it’s been more like a wake,” he said. “And then when it’s gone it will be the funeral.” Naedler, 63, is the director of religious education at the parish and has worked with St. Augustine’s since he first arrived in the South Bronx in 1976.

“We at St. Augustine’s are troopers,” said Denise Wong, 58, as she decorated the aisle of Our Lady of Victory with white plastic bows for an afternoon wedding. Wong is strongly attached to the church where she was baptized and got married; she describes the St. Augustine’s congregation as an anchor for the community and hopes that it will be just as strong in Our Lady of Victory.

Mass has not been held inside St. Augustine’s since 2009 when pieces of the ceiling began to fall, and it was no longer safe to use the premises. Fenlon, 78, who is the head of St. Augustine’s and Our Lady of Victory, has accepted the loss of the church and says that it is time to move on. “It’s just not worth keeping, the repairs would cost close to $6 million,” he said. The land’s estimated value is set between $3.2 and $4.6 million. According to Fenlon, the demolition will cost about  $3 million.

Marva Crocker, 73, a retired schoolteacher who has been attending mass at St. Augustine’s for over 40 years, says that even though she and her fellow parishioners have been working to keep the church open for some time, the final decision to tear down the building came as a shock. “It was a low blow,” she said. “We had no idea it was really going to come to this.”

Leaving St. Augustine’s has been hard on some of the longtime attendees. Crocker explains that getting used to a new church, with different traditions and different people, has taken time. But, she said, church is about community.  “And as our father always says, ‘The building is not the church; we are the church.’”

Correction: A previous version of the story implied Danny Torres taught high school in Queens. Torres lives in Queens but teaches at Cardinal Hayes High School in the Bronx. 

Christopher Dorsey’s aunt said her 17-year-old nephew was pressured by the older suspects in the robbery and ultimate death of a bodega worker in the Bronx.  (SADEF A. KULLY/ Bronx Ink)

Three Bronx men arrested for robbing the bodega where worker Reynaldo Cuevas ended up shot and killed by a police officer were arraigned Friday in Bronx Criminal Court on charges of both armed robbery and murder.

Defendants Ernesto Delgado, 28, Orlando Ramos, 31, and Christopher Dorsey, 17, appeared before Judge Villages yesterday.  Family members of the suspects argued outside the courtroom that the murder charge was not fair.

“Honestly, I feel like he shouldn’t be charged – he was committing a crime but he didn’t shoot him,” said Antonio Rodriquez, 21, brother of Orlando Ramos, about the death of Cuevas. “I think this is a way for the state to clean their hands – that cop shot him.”

The Bronx District Attorney’s office has no comment on the case.

Police said an officer accidentally shot Reynaldo Cuevas, after the 20-year-0ld Morrisania bodega worker stumbled out of the armed robbery scene on September 7.  Cuevas’s family members dispute the claim that the officer’s gun discharged accidentally and have called for an investigation.

The youngest of those charged in the incident, Christopher Dorsey, 17, looked anxious and emotional in court.

“He was the first one that came out,” said his grandmother, Anna Cabrera. “He surrendered. He was so scared that day. He is not doing well inside.”

“He is actually a good kid, he gets good grades, and he was definitely peer pressured into this. He has never held a gun.”

Dorsey’s aunt. Jadeira Cruz, 39, said that her nephew had been diagnosed as emotionally disturbed.

“I think the older men took advantage of his mental status,” said Cruz. “He has the mind of a 13-year old.”

Dorsey’s lawyer. Cesar Gonzalez said that it was his first appearance in court with the defendant and that he would have to review all the material before making an official statement on the case.

Maria Tobia, lawyer for Orlando Ramos, did not give any comments on the case.

All three defendants are scheduled to be back on court on Sept 20th.

9 September, 2012- Bronx - Reverend Que English (left) holds prayer for Reynaldo Cuevas, the young father from the Dominican Republic accidentally shot by police during a robbery scuffle on Friday morning. (The Bronx Ink/Jika González)

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Further reading: Morrisania Mourns Robbery Victim Shot by Police