SENSELESS
Innocent mom killed by stray bullet as violence in NYC soars
Gudelia Vallinas was fatally shot less than a block from her Queens home, an innocent passerby caught in the middle of a gunfight, police said. “Her greatest joy was her family,” her father-in-law said Saturday of the 37-year-old mom of two who came to the Big Apple as a girl from Mexico and strived to make a better life here.
A stray bullet killed an innocent Queens mother just steps from her home — leaving her relatives and neighbors begging for more cops to end the plague of senseless gun violence.
“Her greatest joy was her family,” the father-in-law of Gudelia Vallinas said Saturday of the mom of two, slain the night before.
“She is in good hands,”Miguel Vallinas added. “In God’s hands now. The only thing we want is more control of weapons in this area. It’s really sad. Really sad.”
“I don’t feel hate towards the people who did this,” the fatherin-law added.
The errant bullet struck Vallinas, 37, in the head at around 8:20 p.m. Friday as the Mexican immigrant stepped by accident between two gun-slinging young men and their intended target, a third man they had chased out of the nearby Woodside Houses, sources told The Post.
All three kept running as Vallinas — who cleaned houses for a living and who had been walking home from a trip to Walgreens for the kids — fell to the pavement at Broadway and 48th Street, just half a block from the first-floor rowhouse apartment where she was raising her daughter, 9, and son, 10, the family told The Post.
First responders found the mom dying in a widening pool of blood. Doctors at Elmhurst Hospital
struggled for two hours to save her life before pronouncing her dead.
“The kids know,” a brother-inlaw who declined to give his name said Saturday afternoon as neighbors and family members set up a memorial with photos and flowers outside the home. “Right now, we’re still trying to comprehend what’s happened.”
Vallinas’ killers remained at large Saturday. The shooting appears gang-related, multiple sources told The Post.
“Words can’t express how deeply I feel this loss for her friends and family,” tweeted Capt. Christopher Giambrone, commanding officer of the NYPD Housing Bureau that covers the neighborhood.
“We need your help. Her family needs your help,” he added, urging witnesses to step forward.
Police were already rushing to the scene after the first shots rang out. Police got a 911 call from a resident of the public-housing complex, saying about five or six teenagers in two groups were exchanging gunfire in a chase through the building, according to sources.
The fight then spilled out onto the street.
“I heard the gunshots, like five or six gunshots. I hear somebody screaming there’s a lady down on the floor,” witness Zal Alradai said.
“And then I came out, and all I see was blood on the floor. It was so loud, all I heard was pop, pop, pop, pop, pop . . . it was unbelievable. All you heard was cops coming like crazy,” the witness said.
“These projects used to be good, now it’s all gangs,” agreed another neighbor. “No bail. You get locked up, you’re out same day.”
Police surveillance footage shows two gunmen running as they opened fire on Broadway toward 47th Street.
They ran rampant through a neighborhood coping with a hike in violent crime. In the past year ending March 7, there have been 11 rapes in the precinct where Vallinas lived and died. That’s a 267 percent increase over the previous year, when there were three, stats show.
Felony assaults are up 12.5 percent, with 63 this year. There were three shooting incidents with four victims in the precinct in the year ending March 7, up from one shooting with one victim the year before.
Overall, shootings are way up in the city. There were 173 shooting incidents in the five boroughs during the year ending March 7, up 42 percent from the previous year. There were 189 shooting victims in that period, up 37 percent over the previous year.
Family friend John Castillo, a barber who works across the street from Vallinas, cuts the hair of the victim’s son and her husband, Alfredo.
“They’re churchgoers, they’re nice people, you know,” he told The Post.
“Honor students,” he said of the children.
Vallinas was about the age of her own kids when she was smuggled into the United States from Pueblo, Mexico. She was a “Dreamer,” a DACA recipient — remaining in the country legally under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy, family members said.
In October 2017, she took a jobtraining program offered to those in need by the Coalition for the Homeless.
“They were so happy to be there,” said Kirstin Boncher, who photographed Vallinas and classmates. “They were all trying to get themselves into a better place.”
Residents on Saturday urged the NYPD to send more cops to stanch the growing violence.
“A lot of things have been going on, shootings, robberies, there is crime everywhere and it’s too much,” neighbor Natasha Jones said. “And they’re trying to take the cops off the street? We need the cops on the street. Stop-andfrisk should happen.”
Ed Mullins, president of the NYPD Sergeants Benevolent Association, blamed bail reform and soft-on-crime prosecutors for the surge in violence.
“We can’t blame gangs for firing guns when we allowed them to do it,” he told The Post. “The blame lies in the hands of the mayor, the police commissioner and the elected officials.”