As stray bullets continue to fly around the city, a woman was grazed by yet another random shot Saturday afternoon as she walked down the street in Harlem, cops said.
In video obtained by the Daily News, the 60-year-old victim can be seen casually strolling down the street around 1:40 p.m., heading south near Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Blvd. and W. 131st St., when she is suddenly grazed on her chest by a stray gunshot. The woman stops in her tracks at the street corner, buckles over and then turns left, heading east onto W. 131st St., as she reaches into her purse, according to the surveillance footage, obtained from a fashion boutique on the corner. Seconds before the woman is shot, coming within inches of being seriously wounded, a couple passes by the very same spot pushing a baby in a stroller.
A resident who lives near the scene of the incident said the victim walked all the way down the block on W. 131st St. before getting into an ambulance.
“She was walking normal, she didn’t scream. She didn’t say anything. She didn’t even say help,” the man, who didn’t want to be named, said. “The funny part about it, they didn’t put her on a stretcher. They didn’t say, sit down. They didn’t do anything. I mean, it was almost like she wasn’t hit. She wasn’t bleeding profusely.”
EMS transported the victim to Harlem Hospital where she was in stable condition.
A worker at a nearby liquor store said he heard one shot fired and that his store had to close up as police investigated the area around the crime scene.
“I hear the ‘pow,’ but I [thought] it was like a firework,” the worker said.
There were no immediate arrests in the brazen broad-daylight shooting as cops continue to investigate the incident.
The shooting was only about a mile away from the recent fatal shooting of beloved Harlem community leader and neighborhood merchant Excenia Mette, 61. She was struck in the head by a stray bullet last Tuesday on Lenox Ave. near W. 113th St. after she went out to check on her grandson, who she thought was outside, and got caught in the crossfire between rival gunmen.
Mette, known as “Zeenie,” was a longtime member of the National Action Network run by Rev. Al Sharpton. She also owned and operated Momma Zee’s Food to Plez on Adam Clayton Powell Blvd., opening it in 1987, which she said was the first woman-and-Black-owned bodega in New York City. The store closed down in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“My sister was an anchor,” said Diane London, the victim’s sister, after her death. “She probably fed the person who did what they did. She probably spoke to him earlier that day. … We were telling her to stay inside, don’t run out, because these kids don’t care about you. But she was that kind of person…. She wanted to see change, and her life was taken because she wanted that change.”
Anyone with information is asked to call Crime Stoppers at (800) 577-TIPS. All calls are confidential.
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