More than 40 shot in New York City over holiday weekend (UPDATES)

An outbreak of shootings across New York City over Labor Day weekend – including three at the annual West Indian Day parade in Brooklyn – has left more than 40 people injured and five dead.

The first shooting took place at 6 a.m. Saturday, when a 35-year-old woman was shot and wounded on the corner of Saratoga Ave. and Newport St. in Brooklyn. During the next 24 hours, 23 more people were shot in 13 separate incidents, according to the New York Daily News.

Eight people were shot at a backyard party in the Bronx neighborhood of Williamsbridge on Sunday around 3:30 a.m, the New York Times reports. The wounded included an 11-year-old boy and two girls, ages 13 and 14. Police suspected a 17-year-old was the shooter, and they were looking for him.

Four men were shot at a barbecue in Brooklyn’s East Flatbush neighborhood early Monday morning, NBC News reports. One of the victims, 17-year-old Tyrief Gary, died.

Another fatal shooting occurred at a home in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn, where a 30-year-old man was found just after 2 a.m. on Sunday.

At Monday’s West Indian Day celebration in Brooklyn, two men were shot – one in the leg and one in the stomach – in broad daylight along the parade route, police told NBC News. The shooter fled on foot. A third person was shot in the leg at the parade later in the afternoon.

Finally, just after 9 p.m., 32-year-old Leroy Webster shot and killed 29-year-old Eusi Johnson, a man he had reportedly argued with earlier that evening, on Franklin Ave. in Brooklyn, about four blocks from the West Indian Day parade route. He also killed Denise Gay, a woman sitting on a nearby stoop with her adult daughter, and fired at police officers who were in the neighborhood following the parade, the New York Times reports. Webster wounded two officers. Police then killed Webster.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a longtime anti-gun activist, reminded New Yorkers that, despite the weekend’s violence, the city's crime rate is the lowest in the country.

“Unfortunately, we're going to have to keep fighting,” he said, according to NY1 News. “We just shouldn't be fighting it alone. We really do need the federal government to help in terms of getting guns off the streets.”

Gun violence in the city had been down slightly from last year, according to the New York Police Department statistics. As of Aug. 28, 1,123 people had been shot in New York in 2011, the New York Daily News reports.