‘The hurt is still there’: Families of victims slain by stray bullets say the pain is unbearable
The bullets had no names on them, but the victims certainly did.
From a Navy veteran killed outside a public housing complex in Queens to a year-old Brooklyn baby slain in his stroller, innocent victims of the gun violence plaguing the city are at the heart of the fear and frustration that has neighborhoods on edge.
It happened again early Saturday, when a a 20-year-old from Indianapolis visiting Bushwick, Brooklyn was killed by a stray bullet that hit him in the chest.
No one deserves to die with a bullet in their body, says any relative who has attended a shooting victim’s funeral. But when that slug was meant for someone else, the pain is that much more unbearable.
Throw in the nagging wound of an unsolved murder, and it’s like the bleeding never stops.
“I know there needs to be justice,” said Marie Solis, whose brother, Jose Celis, 58, was shot and killed Oct. 18 by a stray bullet from a road rage fight in the Bronx. The bullet was fired from 500 feet away. The killer is still on the loose.
The day Celis died, cops caught a suspect in an April 9 stray-bullet death of Darrian Ramdial, 25, at the Astoria Houses in Queens.
Ramdial, a Navy vet who was a technician for the New York City Housing Authority, was hit by a bullet suspect Jerald Bethea, 19, meant for another man, said police.
Ramdial died at Elmhurst Hospital six days later, on April 15.
“It’s been six months and the pain, the hurt is still there,” said Ramdial’s grieving mother Alicia Brown, 46. “I know it takes time, but it’s not getting any better.”
Bethea faces 25 years in prison if convicted of murder and weapons charges.
“He doesn’t know how much torture he’s putting me through, and I have to wake up every day without my son,” Brown said.
“It’s always the innocent ones that are getting hit. I don’t even feel like listening to the news any more."
Brown mentioned Davell Gardner, the 1-year-old boy killed by a stray bullet in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn at a cookout July 12. That shooting is unsolved. "He did nothing to nobody and he just got shot and killed,” she said.
On June 12, two men stepped out of a BMW in the Bronx and fired outside Shoelace Park in Wakefield. Instead of their target, they hit 19-year-old Tyana Johnson, who was celebrating her college graduation. The case is unsolved.
On Aug. 9, Christopher Ross, 53, was shot playing handball in Lincoln Terrace Park in Crown Heights. That case is also unsolved.
Detectives have developed significant leads in each case and expect to make arrests, said a police source.
Police caught a suspect in the killing of Bertha Arriaga, a 43-year-old mother of three killed by a stray bullet through her window in Queens on Sept. 30. Accused gunman Issam Elabbar, 31, was busted two days later.
According to the NYPD, soaring gun violence has helped push murders up 33% in 2020. Some 1,515 people have been hit by bullets — 99% more than the 762 at this time last year.
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