‘His name is killer’
Mom's rage at Kyky's slaying
The heartbroken mother of Kyhara Tay, the 11-yearold girl who was fatally struck by a stray bullet in The Bronx last week, told The Post that she did not care to know the identity of the 15-year-old boy accused of firing the deadly shot.
She already had a name for him.
“I don’t want to know his name. His name is killer. He’s a killer,” Yahisha Gomez said outside the family’s Bronx apartment Saturday afternoon.
Matthew Godwin was arrested early Friday for the murder of Kyhara in Foxhurst on Monday. Police allege he was seated on a the back of a moped and firing at a 13-year-old boy when he instead hit the girl.
Stepping out of her apartment Saturday, Gomez
went to a memorial
set up in Kyhara’s memory and touched a picture of her daughter, known to loved ones as “KyKy.”
She said her husband was too distraught to speak.
“It’s sad to say the kids are killing kids. When you’re holding a gun and shooting a gun and you kill somebody, you become a killer. It doesn’t matter if you’re a kid, if you are an adult, it doesn’t matter to me, 15 years old, you’re still a killer.”
Cops arrested Godwin after tracking him to Hotel 95 in The Bronx’s Harding Park area, where he was hiding out with his mom, authorities said.
Gomez laid some blame on Godwin’s mother.
“I get it as a mother, but as a mother we need to understand that what’s wrong is wrong. We gotta raise better kids, you know, responsible kids,” she said. “This kid did this. She gotta be responsible as a mother, like, look, you gotta pay for what you did.”
Gomez said that if her son were the killer, she would have “done the opposite” because “you gotta take responsibility for what you did.”
‘Destroying kids’
She also condemned young men who unleash violence on city streets.
“They think it’s fun. They think it’s all jokes. They think it’s all guns. They want to be tough, but at the end of the day it’s sad that kids are killing kids,” Gomez said.
“They are destroying families. They are destroying kids. They are destroying neighborhoods because now the kids are not safe out here.”
Kyhara was outside a Foxhurst nail salon at around 5 p.m. Monday when the bullet struck her in the stomach. She staggered into a nearby salon and collapsed.
First responders rushed the girl to Lincoln Hospital but she could not be saved.
Godwin was hit on Friday with charges of murder and manslaughter and two counts of criminal possession of a weapon, all as an adult.
Cops said they were still looking for a second suspect, Omar Bojang, 18, who was allegedly driving the moped.
As for Godwin, Gomez said, “I don’t want to say much . . . To me, he’s a killer. He is going to get what he deserves, and God is watching. God is watching, and there’s gonna be justice for KyKy no matter, a kid or not, justice for KyKy.”