An up-and-coming soul singer fatally struck by a motorcyclist in Queens was on her way home from a performance as she continued to build her status as a rising star in New York’s music scene, friends and family said.
Breanna Henderson, 23, who performed rhythm and blues and neo-soul under the stage name Freddie Makenzie, died after a Yamaha motorcycle rider slammed into her early Friday.
“The only reason why she was out that night is because she was chasing her dreams as usual,” said Brian Johnson, a music promoter and her friend of five years.
Henderson was crossing Woodhaven Blvd. at Myrtle Ave. near Forest Park when the motorcyclist slammed into her as the light turned from yellow to red about 2:20 a.m., police said.
“The night that she died, I spoke to her. I told her that I love her. She said, ‘I’ll see you later, I’m going out for the performance,’” her mother, Paula Henderson, 43, said. “Usually she texts me when she’s on her way back home. And I did text her but she didn’t text me back. So I figured that she was busy. And then that’s when I found about the accident.”
Medics rushed Breanna to Jamaica Hospital but she couldn’t be saved. The 34-year-old man riding the motorcycle has not been charged as cops continue to investigate.
The oldest of three sisters and a brother, Breanna Henderson grew up in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, and graduated from the Brooklyn School of Music and Theatre, her mother said. She was studying at Borough of Manhattan Community College while working as a teacher’s aide at a Brooklyn elementary school.
“She was like a beacon, a beacon of light,” her mother told the Daily News Sunday. “She was encouraging and always gave people encouraging words and told them to believe in themselves. That’s how she was, even in life with me. Whenever something was going was wrong she would always be the one that you could come to and talk to.”
Henderson was a voracious reader and loved poet Maya Angelou’s autobiography “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.”
Johnson, who runs an entertainment company called “Losing Not an Option,” met Henderson at a show in Harlem five years ago and immediately realized she stood out.
“Ever since then we’ve been doing shows together,” he said. “She pretty much became like family.”
“Right now the culture is rapping, like drill rap,” he added. “She was all about R&B and neo-soul. So she was bringing back the old soulful music.”
Henderson was performing nearly every night and would bring down the house with her recent single, “Rose Quartz.”
“She definitely was known as far as the New York underground and she was starting to become very notable as far as the New York scene,” Johnson said, noting that she was planning a collaboration with a Chicago artist who worked with Cardi B and that he had recently gotten her an appearance on Hot 97.
Henderson had a Zen-like personality that shone out in her music.
“Always, good vibes, good energy, the light of the party,” he said. “I could always put her on stage and she would change the energy and bring it back to positive vibes.”
The crash left a trail of blood half a block long.
“I just honestly don’t understand how someone could drag someone from one end of the street to the next and not know a human was underneath their bike,” the victim’s mother said. “I’m at a loss for words. I’m still in shock.”
