GuN MYSTERY
Xmas shoot of rev. & son eyed as mistaken ID
A STATEN ISLAND minister and her son wounded in a Christmas Day shooting may have been the victims of mistaken identity, police sources said Tuesday.
As 42-year-old Monique Hall, a minister at the First Central Baptist Church on Wright St. in Stapleton, recovers from a gunshot blast to the back, cops are trying to determine why she and her son may have been targeted.
“She’s a minister. She doesn’t hang around, either. She’ll go to work and then she’ll go to church — that’s it,” Hall’s mother, Janice Watkins, 66, told the Daily News Tuesday. “It was just the wrong place at the wrong time.”
Hall was released from the hospital Monday night, while her son, Dayvon, 19, remains at Richmond University Medical Center with graze wounds to his head and left shoulder.
“There is no clear indication as to why these two victims were chosen,” an NYPD source said. “It is possible that this could be a case of mistaken identity.”
Mother and son were driving past Highview Ave. and Fillmore St. in New Brighton when gunshots shattered the rear window of their SUV about 3:20 p.m. Monday.
The gunfire came from a black SUV that had been tailing them for a brief time, cops were told.
Panicked, Hall drove home and called 911 when she realized she and her son had been shot, cops said.
Watkins said she was getting ready for Christmas dinner when she heard Dayvon’s twin brother, Devin, scream from outside, “Dayvon got shot!”
“I said, ‘Where is he?’ He said, ‘He’s in the car, outside in front of the house,’ ” Watkins recounted. “Everybody came running outside. Only thing I saw was that he was bleeding at the forehead.”
Watkins said Hall and her son had gone out shopping, “Probably for dessert. Dinner was done and ready to go.”
Medics took both victims to Richmond University Medical Center.
The minister told police she had noticed the black SUV a short time before the shooting, as she walked to her car from a bodega.
Watkins was shocked that anyone would purposely hurt her family.
“My grandsons don’t go anywhere. They go to school and they go to work. They play basketball with their friends,” she said.
As for her daughter, Watkins said, “She’s in pain but she’s OK. It’s a Christmas miracle they’re all OK. I only have two grandsons — I don’t want to lose them.”