A 69-year-old woman using a walker was fatally struck in the face by a stray bullet down the block from her home as a shooting erupted in East Harlem Wednesday afternoon, police said.
Robin Wright had just bought some Chinese food with a friend and was on her way back to the apartment she shares with her grandson when she was struck by the stray slug near E. 110th St. and Madison Ave. around 12:25 p.m., cops said.
Wright is believed to be an innocent bystander, police sources said.
“She had a heart of gold. A beautiful person,” her stunned friend Junita Arnold told the Daily News after the shooting. “I’m numb. I’m very hurt.”
Arnold and Wright had left the Chinese restaurant and had just turned onto E. 110th St. heading toward Madison Ave. with their order when Arnold saw three men in hoodies running across the avenue.
“I said [to Wright], ‘They looked like they got guns,’” Arnold said. “I didn’t see the gun but I felt within myself, the way they were running.”
A few moments later, that trio met up with two others — and the shooting erupted, she said.
“I was right,” Arnold said somberly about her deadly premonition. “Next thing, I heard six to seven gunshots and I’m standing there. I looked and my friend is down on the ground.”
Cops say two crooks robbed a man, who then chased them down and fired at them. The robbery victim didn’t hit anyone, but the crooks fired back — striking Wright.
Arnold checked herself to see if she was shot and then turned to Wright, who was lying on the ground, blood pouring from her mouth.
“I said, ‘Oh, my God! Oh, you are all right, Miss Robin?’ And she said, ‘No.’ I said, ‘Are you shot?’ She said, ‘Yes.’”
“And that was the only thing she said to me,” Arnold said. “I thank the Lord that I’m still here. But my friend is not here, and we were together side by side.”
Wright was shot just a few yards from her home. Medics rushed her to Mount Sinai Hospital, but she could not be saved.
No arrests have been made.
Sonya Hampton, 59, who lives in the same building as the victim, heard the gunfire erupt and saw Wright lying on the ground and rushed to her aid.
“I went to move her and that’s when the blood started seeping. The blood was coming from the side of her head. It looked like the bullet hit her cheek and penetrated her brain,” Hampton, who had medical training in the military, said. “I laid down on the floor to let her know she wasn’t alone, I held her hand. She tried to talk but the blood kept coming. I said, ‘Don’t talk just squeeze my hand.’”
Hampton heard Wright gurgling and gasping for air and told her, “’If you know I’m here, squeeze my hand,’ she squeezed,” Hampton recalled. “It soothed my soul. That’s what I’m going to remember about her.”
Wright had been in a nursing home undergoing physical therapy but returned home in July, right around the time she celebrated her birthday, Arnold said. Most of her family lives in Pennsylvania, but she had a doting grandson who had been staying with her through the summer and was often by her side.
Wright had only been using the walker for the past month or so to help her on her errands, Arnold said.
“She was trying to regain [the feeling in] the nerves in her legs,” the friend said. “It was just basically the right leg.”
The gunshots were fired off at E. 110th St. near Park Ave., almost on the opposite end of the block from where they were walking, Arnold said.
“It’s a distance,” she said. “I don’t understand how the bullet hit her. All I know was that I was right next to her.”
“We didn’t expect for any of that to happen,” she added. “That [bullet] wasn’t for her. We were minding our business.”
Wright’s boyfriend of 12 years, Ron McNeil, 62 was alerted of the shooting after his mother saw the incident on the news.
“My mom said someone got shot and then I turned on TV and saw her old beat-up walker and then I knew,” McNeil said.
He described Wright as the “love of my life” as he recalled leaving her building in the morning and thinking she was just going to stay inside for the day.
“God takes the good and leaves the bad,” her boyfriend said. “It was senseless. She was a real caring soul.”
Originally Published: August 27, 2025 at 1:52 PM EDT
