NYPD Crime Stoppers
A seven-month-old girl was shot and killed while sitting in her stroller in “broad daylight” in New York, police said.
Police believe the baby, who they named Kaori Patterson-Moore, was the unintended victim of a gang-related shooting.
Footage from the scene shows two men on a motorcycle driving against traffic in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn. A man in the back of the vehicle pulled out a gun and fired “at least two shots,” New York City Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said.
The motorcycle crashed and the suspected shooter was apprehended, but a “massive” manhunt was underway for the driver, the police chief said.
The baby’s mother, Lianna Charles-Moore, tearfully told the BBC’s US partner CBS: “She’s gone and I’ll never be able to see her again.
“I can’t smell her, I can’t kiss her. I can’t wake up and give her a bottle.
“I can’t dress her. Everything I wanted to do with her, I can’t do with her anymore.”
No one has yet been charged in connection with the shooting.
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani said: “A life that had barely begun was taken away in an instant.
“Today is a devastating reminder of all the work that remains to be done to combat gun violence in this city.”
Several adults and children, including two in strollers, were on a street corner when shots rang out Wednesday.
Baby Kaori’s parents ran to hide in a nearby store, where they realized their child had been shot, CBS reported.
“All the children started hiding in a corner. The family went to the store and the mother started screaming when she noticed the baby was bleeding everywhere. [her] head,” witness Bernius Maldonado said.
Footage from inside the store, published by the New York Post, shows the moment the child’s mother prepares to pick him up and notices the injuries.
The mother then becomes hysterical and starts jumping up and down with her hands clasped behind her head.
Emergency services were called at 1:21 p.m. local time (5:21 p.m. GMT).
Kaori was taken to nearby Woodhull Hospital, where she was pronounced dead. Police reported no other people killed or injured in the incident.
“As a mother, I cannot imagine the pain this family is feeling or the grief they now carry with them,” Tisch said at a news conference. “It’s indescribable.”
Footage seen by police showed the suspects crashing into a car. shortly after fleeing the scene.
Both suspects were thrown from the moped, but the rear passenger landed so hard he lost “both his shoes,” Tisch said.
An ambulance was called for the injured man, who was transported to Brooklyn Hospital, where he was taken into custody.
Investigators believe he matches the description of the armed attacker, based on the clothes he wore and his appearance, but he was taken into custody as part of an unrelated investigation.
