Her glimmer of hope
New clue after stray shots kill two sons
For the mother of teen brothers killed by stray bullets three years and three blocks apart in Queens, hope for justice has long been denied — until now.
Mom Sharon Plummer’s hopes for an arrest were boosted Tuesday when the NYPD released grainy new video of her 16-year-old son NeShawn’s August 2015 slaying in the hopes that someone will come forward and help finally put his killer in handcuffs.
The new video shows the gunman opening fire.
“I just want closure. I’m never gonna be the same again, not until the day I leave this Earth. It’s not going to be any easier for me,” Plummer told the Daily News this week. “Just to know that the person that took my children away from me, that they paid the price for it, they go to jail.”
Sharon Plummer’s 18-year-old son Shawn was killed on Seagirt Blvd. near Beach 29th St. in Far Rockaway on July 13, 2012, hit by an errant bullet when gunfire erupted a few blocks away from his home. She moved to Brooklyn, but her youngest son NeShawn Plummer returned to their old neighborhood to hang out with friends.
On Aug. 30,
2015, he was shot in the head on Seagirt Blvd., just three blocks from where his brother was killed. Like his brother, he was struck by a bullet meant for someone else.
“I don’t wish death on them but at least get them off the streets so they won’t hurt nobody else,” the hopeful mom added.
Plummer’s heart was shattered by Shawn’s killing and broken anew by NeShawn’s.
Her husband, the father of both slain teens, died of a heart attack two years after Shawn’s death. “It was too much for him,” she said.
She has two older sons but the pain and emptiness from her double loss has remained almost unbearable over the years.
“The loneliness, the emptiness, the sadness and the bitterness I still have —
I’m trying very hard not to break down,” she added. “I did a lot of crying over the years.”
Her older sons have moved to New Jersey and visit her in Brooklyn when they can.
“It’s hard, knowing that I had four sons, and I only have two that are remaining,” she said.
The NYPD detective investigating both murders has kept in touch with her over the year, letting her know about developments.
And she can take some solace in knowing that NeShawn’s organs and tissue went to dozens of people in need.
A 17-year-old received one of NeShawn’s kidneys, while his other kidney and pancreas went to a 41-year-old woman, his liver to a 5-year-old girl, both of his lungs to a 54-year-old man and his heart to a 14-year-old boy.
“I’m sad but at the end of the day I’m glad to know that my child is still living in someone else,” she said. “And the person that got NeShawn’s heart, they have a loving and caring heart, because NeShawn and Shawn were two loving young men.”