The 7-month-old girl fatally shot in Brooklyn had recently taken her first steps and said her first word, “Mama,” when her life was cut short by a gangbanger’s stray bullet, the infant’s devastated mother told the Daily News.
Kaori Patterson-Moore was struck in the head by the stray slug as her mom pushed her and her 2-year-old brother in a double stroller near Humboldt and Moore Sts. in East Williamsburg about 1:20 p.m., cops said.
“My daughter, she was innocent. She was happy. She was always laughing,” the girl’s heartbroken mother, 20-year-old Lianna Moore, told The News. “She didn’t deserve that.”
Moore said she and her fiancé, Jamari Patterson, 22, had taken their two young kids out to get baby supplies when she heard a sound, like fireworks, that caused her son to jump out of the stroller.
The mom carried her son, Kaizen, who wept with fright as she wheeled her daughter into a nearby store. Moore was comforting the boy when she looked down and noticed something was wrong with her baby girl.
“My daughter was just there, laying there,” said Moore. “She was shot in the head. She was just bleeding. It was just too much.”
The baby’s father grabbed his little girl and raced her to Woodhull Hospital about seven blocks away, where she died.
The bullet that killed Kaori also wounded her brother, grazing his back after it passed through his sister’s head.
“I went to the hospital,” little Kaizen told the Daily News as his grandmother held him.
The graze left the boy with a “lump” on his back and he was taking Tylenol to manage the pain, his mother said on Thursday.
Kaori’s grandma was teaching kindergarten when she received a frantic call from her daughter, the baby’s mother.
“She was screaming. I had to hang up on her. She was scaring me. She said, ‘They shot Kaori in the head,’” said Linda Oyinkoinyan. “She was screaming. She was frantic. I just passed out in the class.”
The shooter was riding behind an accomplice together on a scooter when he drew his gun, startling surveillance footage released by the NYPD shows.
Cops took 21-year-old Amuri Greene into custody shortly after the shooting and he will be charged with murder, NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch said on Thursday. His accomplice, who was operating the scooter, is still being sought.
Cops believe the shooting was gang-related and are working to determine if the shooter was aiming for the infant’s father, who has ties to members of the Money Over Everything gang, officials said.
“I want justice,” Moore said. “They deserve to stay in jail and they don’t deserve to come out after what they did to my baby, because I can’t get her back.”
The victim’s grandmother reminisced about her granddaughter, saying she “brought a lot of people together” and the baby’s parents became engaged just three weeks before their little girl was killed.
“She was loving. She was caring. She had a beautiful spirit,” said Oyinkoinyan. “She was always laughing, always smiling. She just learned how to say ‘mama’. She just took her first steps at 7 months. She was very smart. The baby was very beautiful.”
The baby’s paternal grandmother echoed that sentiment Thursday morning.
“Everybody loved her,” she said. “Everybody loves her and her brother.”
Mayor Mamdani called the killing “a devastating loss,” while speaking to reporters at NYPD Headquarters in Lower Manhattan.
“My heart aches for the parents impacted by this tragedy and are reckoning with such unthinkable pain,” he said. “Every child in this city deserves to grow up free from threat of gun violence. Every parent deserves the peace of mind knowing their children are safe as they come home.”
A friend of Kaori’s mother created an online fundraiser Thursday to benefit the baby girl’s family and pay for her funeral expenses.
Greene and his accomplice sped off on the scooter they were sharing north on Humboldt St., took a left on Siegel St. and then crashed at Manhattan Ave. three blocks from the scene, according to NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny.
Both men were thrown from the scooter, with Greene, who was riding in the back, hitting the pavement so hard that he lost both shoes, Tisch said.
Video posted online shows the suspects’ scooter slamming into the front end of a sedan as they travel against traffic. The impact sends both men hurling to the pavement, and a shoeless Greene can be seen hobbling on one foot afterward, the footage shows.
The video ends as the driver retrieves what appears to be a firearm from the street, before both men climb back onto the scooter and ride off screen.
EMS alerted by a 911 call placed after the crash brought Greene to Brooklyn Hospital Center for his injuries, where he was taken into police custody for a domestic-violence-related robbery, according to Tisch.
Greene was wearing the same clothing as the baby’s caught-on-video shooter, Tisch said. He is a known gang associate from NYCHA’s Marcy Houses, police said.
With Thomas Tracy, Theodore Parisienne and Rocco Parascandola
