Several violent incidents in the city of Albany over the Fourth of July weekend left one woman dead and four others injured.
Iris Vazquez, 39, of Schenectady, was fatally shot Sunday afternoon on Washington Avenue, Albany police said. She was declared dead at the scene, which was just a block from Washington Park.
Between Saturday night and early Monday morning, two people were also injured in separate stabbings, and two young adults were injured in another shooting.
Albany police have not announced any arrests in connection with any of the incidents, but each investigation remains ongoing.
The incidents come one year after a worse spate of Independence Day weekend violence in Albany, when one teenager died, nine other people were injured and a residential building burned down during three separate shootings.
Violent crime in Albany fell 11% between 2025 and 2024, according to data provided on the city’s website. However, Albany’s overall crime rate is still higher than the national average.
On a per-capita basis, Albany had similar rates of shooting and stabbing victims to other upstate New York cities over the holiday weekend. Buffalo and Niagara Falls had a combined three dead and 15 injured, according to The Buffalo News. In Rochester, eight were injured in a shooting, and the city is now considering implementing a curfew, according to WROC, the city's CBS affiliate.
“I don’t know if the number of homicides this year is down – who cares what that means, you know? One death is too many,” said Bill Pettit, president of the Pine Hills Neighborhood Association in Albany, where the shooting occurred early Monday morning that injured two people.
Albany officials have taken several steps to reduce violent crime in recent months. It launched the Office of Violence Prevention in May, and Mayor Dorcey Applyrs announced Friday that Pastor Charles Gresham would chair the city’s Violence Prevention Task Force.
