Holiday weekend ends with second shooting death

Details are sketchy, but officers in the New York Police Department's 50th Precinct are investigating a second homicide over the Labor Day weekend, this time claiming the life of a University Heights man.

Police were called to 124 Eames Place just before 9:30 Monday night to find Christopher Pierce, 34, with a gunshot wound to his upper torso near his Webb Avenue home. He was taken to Saint Barnabus Hospital on Third Avenue, where he died.

Investigators have provided little other information at this stage, but the shooting follows Friday's murder of Nicolas Vargas Jr., 22, of East Village. Vargas was reportedly in a car on Broadway not far from West 238th Street when he was shot in the head. Police are still looking for two women they believe are somehow connected to that murder.

The weekend of violence has produced both the fourth and fifth homicides of the 50th Precinct this year, pacing it far ahead of the three homicides reported all of last year.