A woman was shot to death sitting in her Jeep outside her job at a Bronx group home where she has worked with disabled people for more than a decade, according to cops and her heartbroken mother.
Julia Anderson was shot while she sat inside her black Jeep across the street from the group home near Murdock and Nereid Aves. in Wakefield about 11:55 p.m. Monday, cops said.
After being shot, Anderson, 39, stumbled out of her Jeep and was found lying on the ground outside of her vehicle, police said. Medics rushed Anderson to Jacobi Medical Center but she could not be saved.
“I spoke to the doctors down in the Bronx and they told me that it was three bullets,” said her mother, Beverley Patterson. “One went straight into her heart — it hit her arm and from the arm goes there.”
Anderson was three weeks away from her 40th birthday, her mother told the Daily News. The victim lived with her mom in Mount Vernon in Westchester county, about a mile from where she was killed.
Patterson said Anderson usually got home from work a little after midnight. She expected to hear her daughter enter their home early Tuesday and became concerned when she didn’t hear anything.
“She’s always making some kind of little noise or something so I know she’s home,” Patterson, 62, said. “I didn’t hear it after 12. Then my other daughter, my younger daughter came and she told me … My heart felt like it was gonna come out.”
Anderson was behind the wheel when two shots were fired through the front passenger-side window, cops believe. Two shell casings were recovered at the scene.
Witnesses told police after they heard the shots they was a man on a moped speed away from the scene. It was not immediately clear if that man is the killer or a witness.
Ceresa Butler was sitting outside on her porch near the murder scene when she heard the shots.
“I thought it was firecrackers,” she said. “Then it went again and that’s when I heard her scream, ‘Oh my god!’”
No arrests have been made.
“God have to take care of everything,” the victim’s mother said. “He’s the one that’s in control and take care of everything that happens. You can’t walk around and hate people. You have to love them in a sense. Even if they do something wrong like that which is not good.”
Police say the victim had no criminal history.
Institutes of Applied Human Dynamics, the non-profit that runs the group home where Anderson worked, did not return a request for comment.
A 74-year-old neighbor in Mount Vernon who gave his name only as George worked with the victim at the group home.
“She is such a nice person,” George said. “I don’t know anything about her that is crooked or anything that is not right. All I know is she is an honest person. She go to work, she do her work.”
“I know her since she’s a baby,” he added. “You don’t know a sweeter person than she. She don’t get no problems. She don’t argue with people as far as I know. I never see her in a fight. Nothing.”
With Thomas Tracy
