BROOKLYN, New York, Sept. 7, 2026. A gunshot on a crowded Crown Heights block Monday afternoon left a 24-year-old man wounded near the intersection of St. Johns Place and Nostrand Avenue, about two blocks from the West Indian Day Parade route. The victim is expected to survive. Officers arrested Nayshawn Wilkinson, 19, at the scene and found a .22-caliber pistol nearby. Prosecutors now accuse him of attempted murder. Wilkinson had spent barely five weeks outside a jail cell, free on $5,000 bail that a Brooklyn judge set over prosecutors' objections in an earlier attempted murder case.
That earlier case traces to July 22, when a 15-year-old boy was shot in the foot near the Callahan-Kelly Playground in Brownsville. The boy required surgery to remove the bullet fragment. Investigators identified Wilkinson as the shooter, and prosecutors filed attempted murder, assault and weapons charges, urging Brooklyn Criminal Court Judge Janice Robinson to hold him without bail pending trial. On August 4, Robinson declined. She priced his release at $5,000 cash or a $10,000 bond, and he paid his way out. A grand jury later indicted him on the attempted murder count, with his arraignment calendared for the Tuesday after the parade. He missed it. Police already had him locked up for shooting a second man.
Wilkinson's arrest capped a familiar pattern for the parade. Before dawn, as J'Ouvert revelers gathered near Utica Avenue and Carroll Street, several people were stabbed, at least one in the neck. That afternoon, a 37-year-old woman took a bullet in the leg near Eastern Parkway and Kingston Avenue, and another parade-goer was wounded alongside her. Counting Wilkinson's victim, at least seven people were shot or stabbed during Monday's festivities. A year earlier, six people were shot and one slashed at the same event. The year before that, a gunman leapt a barricade mid-parade and sprayed bullets into the crowd. A 25-year-old man died in the gunfire, and five others were wounded. City officials had trimmed this year's parade by thirty minutes, hoping shorter hours would mean less bloodshed, and the violence happened anyway.
Wilkinson's release was not an isolated lapse. A review of thirteen of Judge Robinson's recent criminal cases found that not once did she follow a prosecutor's bail recommendation. Eight defendants walked away with no bail at all, two of them facing attempted murder charges, and the remaining five saw bail set well under what prosecutors asked for. Jonathan Morris, 21, was fighting an attempted murder charge along with weapons counts when he came before her; prosecutors sought $250,000 cash to hold him. Robinson let him out for $5,000 in one case and a single dollar in the other. During an argument, Adrian Benitez, 29, is accused of firing a gun. One bullet hit a seven-year-old service dog that belonged to a woman with Down syndrome. Prosecutors asked for $150,000 bail; Robinson freed him on his promise to return to court on November 24. Elijah Guy, 32, is accused of firing at a 66-year-old man twice during an argument. Prosecutors sought $50,000 cash or a $100,000 bond. Robinson set him free without either.
Voters put Robinson on the bench in 2024, and she started out hearing civil matters before her assignment moved to criminal court. Bail statutes in New York ask judges to weigh mainly one question, whether a defendant is likely to return for trial, and only in recent years has it required them to factor in things like a defendant's history with firearms; danger to the public at large still carries no formal weight. However, Robinson never needed a change in the law to see what Wilkinson might do next. Prosecutors spelled it out for her on August 4, and she let him go anyway.
Evan Doerr, Founder and Executive Director of the Preventable Crime Project, said: “A man already charged with putting a bullet in a fifteen year old boy does not belong on a public street corner, and certainly not one packed with a million people celebrating a holiday. Judge Robinson had every fact she needed to keep Wilkinson confined, and she chose five thousand dollars instead.” The Preventable Crime Project's Judicial Performance Database catalogues rulings like these, tracking the judges whose bail decisions return known violent defendants to the communities they have already harmed.
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