A ninth-grade girl is clinging to life after being shot in the head when she challenged a crazed gunman during a fight outside a Bronx party, cops said today.
Yvette Torres, 15, a student at DeWitt Clinton High School in The Bronx, was shot in the back of her head during the Saturday night fracas on Valentine Avenue near 187th Street in Fordham.
Witnesses said Torres had challenged the gunman after he began shooting around 11:35 p.m.
“She tried to break up a fight, she tried to get in the middle,” said an eyewitness named Ada, who declined to give her last name.
Torres was rushed by ambulance to St. Barnabas Hospital, where she was initially listed in critical condition.
Doctors later stabilized her, and she was transferred to a pediatric intensive-care unit at New York-Presbyterian/Columbia, a hospital official said.
Her stricken brother, Justin Torres, 16, said his sister is a good student who wants to be a nurse one day.
Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said cops only had a “vague description” of the shooter and were searching for a black man wearing a blue hoodie.
He described the shooting scene as “a dispute at a party that spilled outside.”
After firing the shots, the gunman fled, cops said.