A sprawling search is underway for a gunman and another individual suspected of killing a seven-month-old girl after shots were fired on a New York City street on Wednesday, authorities said.
The New York City Police Department (NYPD) is asking for the public’s assistance in identifying two male suspects, who investigators say were involved in the shooting that occurred at the intersection of Moore Street and Humboldt Street in Brooklyn.
“The NYPD is looking for two males who fled northbound on a moped” after the incident, the department posted on X, along with two images of the suspects.
The victim, Kaori Patterson-Moore, was hit by a bullet after several shots were fired from a moped. The baby was pronounced dead at the scene.
At a press conference on Wednesday night, NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch said the shooting was gang-related.
The man on the back of the moped fired two shots out into the street, where there were pedestrians and children, at about 1:15 p.m, she added. The men then fled before crashing into an oncoming car and abandoning the moped five blocks from the crime scene. Police have seized the vehicle, she confirmed.
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Tisch said police have one unidentified man in custody from an unrelated investigation who matches the suspected shooter’s description, and that detectives are working to determine whether he was involved.
Police are still looking for the moped driver who has become the focal point of what Tisch called a “massive NYPD manhunt” involving bloodhounds.
New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who also spoke at the press conference, said: “There are no words that can mend the heartbreak this family is feeling now, no declaration strong enough to lift the grief they are now forced to carry, no embrace wide enough to heal the hole that has been left their lives.”
He added that New Yorkers cannot “grow numb to this pain.”
In an X post on Wednesday evening, he thanked first responders and hospital staff for their efforts in trying to save the baby girl, calling her death “a heinous murder.”
The victim’s mother, Lianna Charles-Moore, 20, told the New York Post that the girl was seated next to her brother in a double stroller when “something went off” in the vicinity.
“We thought it was fireworks, but my son jumped out of the stroller, and I picked him up and carried him,” she told the U.S. outlet.
“I was hugging him, and then when I looked to my left, my daughter was just there, lying there. She was shot in the head. She was just bleeding. It was just too much.”
She said her son, who is two years old, was grazed in the back by a bullet.
“My daughter was innocent. She didn’t deserve that,” she said.
Tisch said the shooting marked “a terrible day” in New York City that “shocks the conscience.”
Didn’t mention the perps color so I assume he’s not white?
the cost of diversity I guess, these are the doctors and engineers we are importing