A 7-month-old girl died after a stray bullet hit her while she was in her stroller in New York City’s Brooklyn, according to local authorities. The incident took place on Wednesday, April 1 (local time) in broad daylight, the New York Police Department said.
A security footage from the scene captured the unnerving moment when the baby’s mother, Lianna Charles-Moore, first realised that her infant had been shot.
The incident took place on a pavement, per the police. The New York Police Department (NYPD) said the baby girl, named Kaori, was an unintended target, describing the shooting as gang-motivated.
In footage cited by the New York Post, Charles-Moore is seen taking cover inside a deli with baby Kaori, her crying 2-year-old brother, and a man who appeared to be the baby girl’s father as loud blasts rang out.
The family had initially mistaken the source of the booms to be fireworks.
The clip then shows Charles-Moore, who had been tending to her son, pulling back the stroller’s visor and bending down to glance at her infant daughter, only to find that she had suffered a fatal head wound.
Kaori was rushed to a hospital, where the doctors pronounced dead.
At least two shots were fired by a pair of moped-borne male perpetrators, the NYPD said in an official statement.
Several adults and children, along with two strollers, including one carrying Kaori, were present in the direction in which the shots were fired by the pillion, NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch said.
According to surveillance footage pieced together by the investigators, the moped crashed with a car a few blocks away after the shooting. The impact was so severe that both the rider and the pillion were flung off the two-wheeler.
One of them was injured, and was rushed to a hospital, officials said. The police believed he fit the description of the shooter, and he was subsequently taken into custody in connection with an unrelated investigation, Tisch informed.
A massive NYPD manhunt is underway for the second suspect, she added.
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani termed Kaori’s killing “an unthinkable loss”.
“I’m grateful for the hospital staff who did everything they could and the NYPD for their ongoing work to find those responsible for this heinous murder. We cannot accept this violence as normal. Too many families have suffered this pain,” he said in a tweet.
