WEST INDIAN PARTY! Mayoral candidates join Brooklyn’s giant parade
The city’s West Indian Day Parade rolled through the streets on Monday with politics in the air and a child’s death on marchers’ minds.
Big crowds gathered along one of Brooklyn’s busiest streets to watch the annual parade, the largest in the city. The festivities were raucous, highlighted by sweat-soaked elected officials furiously pressing the flesh with crowds just a little more than a week before Primary Day.
But the celebrations were somewhat tempered by the shooting death of a 1-year-old boy in his stroller blocks from the parade’s start. The boy, Antiq Hennis, was struck in the head Sunday night by a bullet meant for his father, said police Commissioner Ray Kelly.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who marched at the front of the parade, said “today, we are all grieving.” And mayoral candidate John Liu, the city comptroller, called for a moment of silence during the dignitary-filled breakfast before the parade kicked off along Eastern Parkway.