MOM GOT SHOT
Daughter shocked as grandma of 12 slain hours after their final chat
A Brooklyn construction worker killed by a stray bullet had planned to make a pork chop supper for her sick granddaughter that evening, devastated relatives said Tuesday.
Dorothy Dixon, 53, made the promise as she left her Crown Heights home Monday morning to the Coney Island construction site where she worked as a flagger.
“Before she went to work, she told me she was going to make pork chops and gravy.” said Dixon’s daughter, Minnie Scott, 30. Dixon rarely cooked but wanted to make the special meal for Scott’s 7-year-old daughter.
“The last time I spoke to her was around 10-something that morning,” Scott said. “She texted me. She was like, ‘Don’t forget to get an onion, and don’t forget to take the pork chops out.’ You know, mom’s scolding.” Two hours passed. “Then my brother called me and was like, ‘Mom got shot,’ ” Scott said. “I was like, ‘Stop playing, no she didn’t, I just texted her this morning.’ ”
Scott hasn’t had the heart to tell her daughter why grandma’s special dinner never materialized.
“My mother has 12 grandkids, and my 7-year-old daughter is the only one that doesn’t know,” Scott said. “That was her only grandmother. I don’t know how to tell her because I don’t want her to break down, because I’m going to break down. I’m trying to hold it together.”
“It’s hard,” she added. “My nieces and nephews, they loved my mother. They didn’t take it so well. My mother was their everything.”
Dixon was working at a construction site on W. 33rd St. and Neptune Ave. when a nearby argument between two men also there looking for work escalated into gunshots about 11:40 a.m. Monday. Dixon and another construction worker were hit by stray bullets, cops said.
“I was told they were standing there, they were working, and two people got into a fight and they started shooting,” Scott said. “They could’ve just had a fistfight. Nobody had to pull out a gun ... I’ve had fights when I was younger .… Just settle it like the old days.”
At least one of the bullets struck Dixon in the chest. She was taken to Coney Island Hospital, but doctors couldn’t save her. Her 47-year-old coworker was hit in his left leg and taken to NYU Langone Hospital-Brooklyn in stable condition, police said.
“My mom was the nicest, kindest, sweetest person,” Scott said. “She would always help you. We would scold her like, ‘Mom, why are you always helping everybody out?’ And she’d be like, ‘Oh, they called me asking for help. I had to.’ But if you were rude to my mom or disrespected her, she wouldn’t take that.”
Cops have made no arrests in the slaying.
“We know that there was a dispute where shots were fired and subsequently a car fled the scene,” NYPD Chief of Detectives Dermot Shea said Tuesday. “We’re working on identifying that car as we speak. We have some strong leads.”
Dixon, a mother of six who lived in Crown Heights, was born in South Carolina and moved to the Big Apple when she was a young child.
Before taking the job in construction about 10 years ago, she worked in security and day care.
“I was surprised when she told me she was going to work construction,” Scott said. “My mom always made sure she was working. But then she got this construction job, and she stuck with it. My mother really loved her job.”
“Every day when she came home she would tell me what she did that day, like, ‘Today we had to dig that hole and fix those pipes,’ ” Scott added.
According to Scott, Monday was her mom’s first day at the job site.
“I still don’t believe it, but I know it’s real,” she said of her mother’s death. “Now we have to plan the funeral, and that’s the worst part. I don’t want to do it. My older siblings, they want to bury my mom in her favorite color. So we’ll go get a lavender dress.”