Public’s aid sought to find daughter’s killers
Mom: Merritt was with friends when 3 gunmen opened fire
While Shanta Merritt didn’t mention her son’s killing in Queens in 2012 during her emotional public appeal Friday for help in solving her daughter’s year-old slaying, she said afterward that coping with the grief of losing another child all these years later has been in some ways tougher.
“It is harder because they left her and they didn’t come back, yeah if I hear gunshots, I’m going to run too, but I’m going to come back,” she said. “To me that’s coward (ice).”
The Manhattan woman is referring to the “supposed
friends” who went with her daughter Ieasha Merritt the night of July 4, 2020, to an after-hours nightspot but then left Merritt for dead and didn’t try to help her after three masked gunmen jumped out of a vehicle and shot up the parking lot at the corner of Hamlin and Albany streets in Hamilton Hill where Merritt was walking.
The 34-year-old Merritt, mother of a teenage son, was struck in the head. Her mother clarified Friday that an autopsy showed Merritt was not pregnant as initially reported.
“The shooters’ vehicle fled, and so did everyone in the lot, driving around Ieasha as she lay alone critically wounded,” said Sgt. Matthew Dearing, a city police spokesman.
Minutes passed before someone called for help, he added.
Merritt was rushed to the hospital but died of her injures on July 10, 2010, leaving behind a teenage son and other grieving relatives.
Dearing said over the past year several law enforcement agencies have assisted the Schenectady police in the investigation, chasing down “multiple leads and received cooperation from numerous witnesses.” Police also have surveillance footage of the crime.
“We want the public to know that we do have people of interest in regards to this, but we are still asking for your help,” added Dearing. “Ieasha was not alone when she was shot, there were people in that parking lot still full of activity who saw what happened and instead chose to leave.”
No arrests have been made. Merritt has previously said her daughter had just gotten a new apartment with her teenage son right before she was slain.
In March 2012, Merritt lost her 19-year-old son Daryl Adams, who was gunned down in Queens.
Police arrested two men immediately after the shooting and the pair were sentenced separately in 2012 and 2013 for Adams’ slaying, according to information online
On Friday, Merritt told reporters that “my daughter was everything to me” and that she’s having a “hard time dealing with fact that I can’t speak to my daughter and I can’t see my daughter anymore.”
With her husband, Keith Bracey, by her side, she pleaded with eyewitnesses to “stop being scared and come forward” and appealed directly to Merritt’s friends who bolted when the shots rang out.
“She was a first child, she was a mother at a young age, she has a son, and right now I’m just asking for everyone that was there with my daughter, her so-called friends that left her, come forward,” said Merritt. “We need justice for my daughter, we need justice for her son and my family.”
Anyone who witnessed what happened or has helpful information can call the department’s TIPS line at (518) 7886566.