INNOCENTS LOST
Lead flies in B’klyn, killing two women Kin shattered after pair caught in gang feud barrage
2 B’klyn women slain as gunmen fire into crowd
‘Why are you all crying?’ asks daughter
HOURS AFTER her mother was gunned down outside a Brooklyn housing complex, a 3-year-old girl asked grieving relatives a simple, sorrowful question.
“Why are you all crying?” little Amelia wondered.
The toddler had no idea that her mother, Chynna Battle, 21, was killed in a hail of bullets that also claimed the life of a second woman, Shaqwanda Staley, 29.
Staring into the innocent girl’s eyes, Battle’s relatives couldn’t bring themselves to deliver the news.
“All I could do was touch her face and walk away,” said Valda Battle, 38, the victim’s aunt.
Chynna Battle and Staley were shot dead Wednesday night when two gangbangers opened fire into a crowd of people hanging out in the courtyard of Stuyvesant Gardens Houses in Bedford-Stuyvesant, sources said.
The victims were not the intended targets, cop sources said.
Three bullets ripped into Staley’s back. Battle, a hostess at an Applebee’s on Fulton St. in Brooklyn, was found facedown on a bench with a gunshot wound to the head, police sources said.
“Whoever did this don’t know how bad they hurt our family,” said Battle’s stepmother, Sandra Burton.
“No one can heal our pain. It’s killing me. My stepdaughter is gone, and my heart will never be repaired.”
A relative of Staley cried out from behind her apartment door Thursday.
“My baby girl. My baby girl,” wailed Shameeka Staley.
The motive remained unclear but sources said the shooting stemmed from a beef between rival gangs operating out of Stuyvesant Gardens and the nearby Roosevelt Houses.
One witness told cops she saw two men from the Roosevelt Houses walk into the courtyard on Gates Ave. before one of them pulled out a gun and sprayed bullets into the crowd, sources said.
The group of roughly 20 people had been drinking, playing cards and smoking out of a hookah, sources said.
Cops found six .45-caliber shell casings and three .380 shell casings at the scene, indicating two shooters. A total of nine shots were fired into the crowd at about 9:30 p.m., sources said.
Battle’s cousin, Bianca Martin, 28, narrowly avoided being gunned down herself.
“I went to leave to get my daughter and I heard the gunshots,” she said.
“It was like five or six gunshots. I turned around and saw people
running and screaming. My little cousin ran through the building and told me, ‘Chynna got shot in the head!’
“I was like, ‘What are you talking about? I was just talking to her literally three seconds ago.’”
Staley, who lived several blocks away, was taken to Kings County Hospital Center, but couldn’t be saved. Battle, who lived opposite the courtyard, died at the scene.
“She was just lying there, slumped over the table,” Martin said. “She was gone before the ambulance got here.”
As of late Thursday, relatives had yet to deliver the news to Amelia.
“When she’s ready,” Burton said. “She is a very smart, intelligent girl.”
Amelia’s father, Elijah St. Omer, 19, picked the toddler up and brought her to his house in the hours after the shooting.
While speaking to the Daily News outside his home Thursday, St. Omer’s still-in-the-dark daughter emerged outside with a wide smile and beckoned him to come in and play.
“She likes to hug and play with me,” St. Omer (inset photo) said. “That’ll lighten me up.”
Outside a bodega near Staley’s childhood home on Hancock St., her friends attached her photo to a red brick wall and scrawled in chalk below it, “Q Baby! We love you.”
“The whole ’hood hurting,” said pal Joshua Williams, 29. “She was a beautiful person. Everyone loved Q.” Battle’s father, James Sledge, 52, said his daughter told him last night that she was going to the courtyard for a cookout. He added that he still couldn’t wrap his mind around the fact that the innocent outing would lead to his daughter’s death. “I ain’t mad at nobody,” Sledge said. “I just want to find out who the person was that was doing the shooting.” Sledge’s wife, Sandra, offered a much sharper reaction. “Whoever did that to my stepdaughter, may they a-- burn in hell.” Bill Reilly, a 42-year-old resident who has known Battle her entire life, said he was home when he heard about 10 gunshots.
“It had to be over somebody else’s beef,” Reilly said. “Everybody was just chillin,’ and somebody come out of nowhere. Innocent bystanders get hit.”
Janasha Perry, 23, who has lived in the Stuyvesant Houses for the past three years, was walking out of her building just before the gunplay.
“That could’ve been me last night,” said the mother of three. “Even just walking home or into my building, that could’ve been me. It hurts me to know that people young or old could get killed over something petty.”
Battle’s mother fondly remembered her daughter.
“Chynna spoke her mind,” her mother, Mozelle Brown said. “She knew what she wanted. She was a good daughter.”
Brown was comforted by nearly 100 friends and family members who came to a vigil in the housing project’s courtyard near where the killing occurred.
Mourners lit candles and placed them in front of a makeshift shrine with a photo of Battle.
“She wanted to join the Navy but she stayed to raise her daughter,” Brown said. “She was always with her child. Always. She worked very hard to support her daughter.”
A similar tribute was held for Staley nearby on the corner of Howard Ave. and Hancock St.
“Everything she did was for her daughter,” said friend Daya Rhone. “She was a beautiful person and she was loved.”
No one can heal our pain. My stepdaughter is gone. SANDRA BURTON