American Notes NEW YORK CITY

Even New Yorkers, inured to their city's escalating violence, were shocked: four children dead just because they happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Veronica Corales, 9, was asleep in her parents' car. Yaritima Fruto, 1, was sitting in her mother's lap in an auto stopped in traffic. Ben Williams, 3, was asleep in his family's apartment. Rayvon Jamison, 9 months, was playing in a walker in his grandmother's kitchen. In a span of nine days, all were struck by random shots fired from 9-mm semiautomatic pistols, which have become the favorite weapon of drug runners and neighborhood gangs.

"There is no fistfighting anymore," complained a frightened neighbor of one of the victims. "If they have a confrontation, they go get their guns." Mayor David Dinkins vowed that his city "would not roll over" to the killers. But at week's end 14-year-old Shamel Knight was gunned down in a dispute over a moped.