Sister listens in horror as veteran JFK Airport TSA worker shot on Brooklyn street: ‘I heard my brother die over the phone’
A veteran Kennedy Airport TSA worker was on the phone with his sister when he was shot to death on a Brooklyn street two blocks from his mother’s home early Sunday, cops and relatives said.
Donovan Davy, 45, was on his way to visit his mother after finishing work when he was shot in the neck and leg near E. 35 St. and Church Ave. in East Flatbush about 12:20 a.m.
“I heard three shots and I was calling his name but he wasn’t responding at all,” his sister, who was on the phone with him, told the Daily News. ”I just couldn’t believe it. I heard my brother die over the phone.”
Police believe the shooter snuck up behind him and fired the fatal shots, an NYPD spokesman said. He was heading to his mother’s home, where his sister and family were waiting for him.
“The person was probably watching him from a distance,” said the sister, who asked that her name not be used. Their final conversation was lighthearted, she recalled.
”I was saying ‘Where are you?’ and he was saying, ‘I’m walking fast like a chicken with his head cut off’ and that he will be there soon,” she said.
After hearing the shots, she ran outside in time to see first responders performing CPR on him. “It was like he was trying to fight,” she said.
But it wasn’t enough. Medics took him to Kings County Hospital, where he died.
“The people who did that to him were malicious,” his sister said. “He just minds his business.”
No arrests have been made in his slaying and police have not established a motive.
Davy worked for the Transportation Security Administration as a Transportation Security Officer at Kennedy Airport for the past 17 years, screening for explosives, his family said.
“He was trying to aim for 20 years working for TSA,” his sister said. “He had numerous awards. He was very recognized at JFK. He loved his job, that was his passion.”
“He knew how to catch bombs in the X rays,” she added. “He received certificates for how long he has been there.”
Davy’s colleagues were shocked by his slaying.
“Donovan Davy was a longtime valued employee taken from us far too soon in another senseless act of gun violence while off duty,” John Bambury, the TSA federal security director for JFK Airport, said Sunday. “He will be missed by his co-workers and the whole TSA family.”
Davy had no criminal history, according to cops.
“He was definitely not a street guy and wasn’t involved in those activities,” the victim’s cousin Courtney Davy said. ”He works everyday and he’s inside most times. … I’m not sure what’s going on here.”
Davy wasn’t one to make enemies, the cousin added.
“He was a happy-going guy. I’ve never known him to have a beef. He was very passive,” he said. “If there was a confrontation he would walk away from it. … The whole family is shaken up by this; we are all trying to make sense of this.”
Davy was born in Jamaica and immigrated to New York City at a young age, his sister said. He attended Medgar Evers College in Brooklyn.
“He is very intellectual. He speaks French, Spanish,” his sister said. “He would always correct me and make sure my grammar was good. … He loved traveling. We were planning on going to Thailand in January.”
Davy’s slaying was the second fatal shooting in Brooklyn in less than hour.
A 53-year-old man was shot in the head on Decatur St. near Malcolm X Blvd. in Bedford-Stuyvesant about 11:25 p.m., cops said.
Medics rushed that victim to Kings County Hospital but he could not be saved. His name was not immediately released.
Police have made no arrests in either shooting, which are not believed to be related.
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