Girl, 11, dies after hit by stray bullet on street in Bronx
An 11-year-old girl hanging out after school with friends at a Bronx nail salon was fatally shot in the stomach by a stray bullet Monday afternoon, police sources and witnesses said.
The youngster was standing on Fox St. near Westchester Ave. in Foxhurst at 4:50 p.m., waiting for another young friend who was getting her nails done at the New Kim salon when chaos erupted.
Two men on a scooter, one of whom was brandishing a gun, were chasing another man along Fox St., witnesses and police told the Daily News. Their intended target ran north on Fox, then doubled back when he couldn’t get inside a building, and headed toward Westchester Ave.
The scooter passenger started shooting, and one of his shots sailed a half-block down Fox St. and struck the girl, said Assistant Chief Philip Rivera, the commanding officer of Patrol Borough Bronx.
She died of her injury, Mayor Adams announced Monday night.
“She was coming in and out talking to her friend, and when she went outside there were shots,” said Lillian Johnson, 18, who was also getting her nails done when the shooting erupted.
The girl and one of her pals ducked behind a car for cover. The young victim then made a beeline for the salon, but one of the bullets hit her as she fled, sources said.
“She was trying to run away from the shots. She was holding her stomach. She kept saying, ‘Ow, it hurts!’ Her friend was freaking out. She was getting her nails done. The girl was with her friend. They had just gotten out of school. They had their book bags and everything,” Johnson said.
The girl slumped into one of the salon chairs, then passed out on the floor, Johnson said.
Several of the store workers and customers rushed to her aid, including another customer, Maya Jones, 18, who unzipped the youngster’s sweatshirt and saw the bullet hole.
“She stopped responding. An older lady put pressure on the wound. She was turning pale. She was changing colors. She was turning blue,” Jones said. “I just hope she’s going to be all right.”
Medics rushed the girl to Lincoln Hospital in critical condition, cops said.
Adams met the girl’s family at the hospital, and the girl died as he prayed with her parents, the mayor told a crowd gathered at the Bethel Gospel Assembly Destiny Worship Pavilion in Harlem, where he was speaking at a vigil for the victims of the Buffalo mass shooting.
“I went to the hospital, and I prayed with them. The doctors stated that they were going to work on her throughout the night,” he said, adding that a staffer leaned over to him at the hospital and broke the news, “We lost her.”
That revelation drew gasps from the audience.
Adams said the girl’s attacker is just as evil as the racist murderer who killed 10 people at the Tops Friendly Market in Buffalo Saturday afternoon.
“You are no less demonic than the person who took the life of those 10 innocent people in Buffalo,” Adams said. “Pain is pain.”
The two suspects, one wearing a gray-and-black hooded sweatshirt, the other a black hooded sweatshirt, zoomed north on Fox St. and escaped, police sources said.
Cops are asking anyone with information about the suspects to call Crime Stoppers at (800) 577-TIPS.
The violence is the latest in a string of stray-bullet shootings that have wounded and killed children in New York this year.
On April 8, 16-year-old Angellyh Yambo was killed about a mile away from Monday’s shooting when a teenage gunman wielding a build-it-yourself “ghost gun” fired a half-dozen rounds from a half-block away.
About a week earlier, on March 31, a shooter pumped 11 bullets into a car on E. 56th St. and Linden Blvd. in East Flatbush, Brooklyn, apparently mistaking it for another vehicle, police sources said. Kade Lewin, 12, was killed by the gunfire, while his cousin, Jenna Ellis, 20, was badly hurt.
On March 25, a stray bullet wounded a 3-year-old girl as her dad picked her up at a Brooklyn day care center. On March 21, a 7-year-old girl was grazed in the stomach as she and her mother stood on the corner of W. 30th St. and Surf Ave. in Coney Island.
And on Jan. 29, a little Bronx girl two days shy of her first birthday was shot in the face as she sat in the backseat of a car parked on Valentine Ave. near E. 198th St. in Bedford Park. The girl miraculously survived.