Labor Day Shooting-Stabbing at Brooklyn's Grand Army Plaza Leaves 1 Dead, 1 Injured

UPDATE: A lead staff member for Gov. Andrew Cuomo was reportedly shot in the head two hours later, elsewhere along the parade route. He’s now in critical condition.

One young man is dead and another is injured after an early-morning shooting and stabbing on Labor Day at Grand Army Plaza in Brooklyn, according to the NYPD.

The violence broke out around 2 a.m., a couple hours after the start of J’Ouvert — a high-energy tradition among Brooklyn’s Caribbean population in the wee hours before the West Indian Day Parade.

A 24-year-old man who was stabbed in the torso during the violent exchange died shortly after at Park Slope’s New York Methodist Hospital.

The second victim, a 21 year-old man who was shot in his buttocks, was listed in stable condition at the same hospital.

“There are no arrests at this time,” the NYPD said in a statement. “The investigation is ongoing.”

The J’Ouvert route began on Eastern Parkway and ran down Flatbush Avenue. The New York Daily News reported that an extra 1,500 police officers had been deployed to “patrol the overnight parties and march prior to the West Indian Day Parade.”

J’Ouvert is a throwback to slave celebrations in the colonial-era Caribbean.

According to a primer on Brownstoner, the celebrations originated “with French settlers’ introduction of masquerade balls to the Caribbean in 1783. Banned from participating in their masters’ Carnival celebrations, slaves would hold smaller carnivals in their backyards.”