Video shows moment female assassin shot woman dead on New York City pavement
‘It was horrible. That lady executed my sister,’ victim’s brother says
A Brooklyn mom was killed by another woman who walked up behind her and shot her in the back of the head on a pavement in New York City before walking away, surveillance footage from the street shows.
Delia Johnson was speaking to a group of people on Franklin Avenue at Prospect Place in Crown Heights in central Brooklyn at around 9.40pm on Wednesday when she was attacked.
Ms Johnson was unconscious and unresponsive following the shooting, and she was pronounced dead at Interfaith Hospital, according to police.
Family members of the 42-year-old say they think the murderer followed Ms Johnson from a funeral in the area earlier in the day.
“She was at a funeral earlier in the evening for an old neighbourhood friend to pay her respects, and then this happened,” her brother, Mathis Johnson, 47, told the New York Daily News. “It was horrible. That lady executed my sister.”
The killer, a woman with blonde hair wearing a black top and black leggings, walked up behind Ms Johnson and shot her in the head and discharged her weapon again at her victim when she hit the ground.
The murder led bystanders to run for their lives. The people Ms Johnson had been speaking to on the stoop fell backwards and a man leaning against a car recoiled in shock.
The shooter walked back to a white car in the middle of the street, got into the driver’s seat and drove away.
Ms Johnson’s siblings said she was an enthusiastic and generous entrepreneur.
Before the shooting, Ms Johnson was at a funeral at the Sealy Culyer Funeral Home on Pacific Street, just four blocks away from the scene of the shooting.
Hundreds of people were there mourning, Mathis Johnson told the paper. He added that he didn’t know the woman seen in the video, but that she was also at the funeral beforehand.
Speaking about his sister, Mr Johnson said: “She was a beautiful person. She didn’t necessarily have the world to give, but she would give it. She was an amazing woman. Everybody says positive things when people pass, but everything I said about her was 100 per cent true.”
Ms Johnson is survived by a 17-year-old daughter. Her sister Cordelia Berry said she would take care of her niece.
“She always said, ‘If anything ever happens to me, take care of my baby,’” Ms Berry told the New York Daily News.
She added that she thinks the killer may have been envious of her sister’s success. Ms Johnson had been able to buy a car for her daughter.
“She was Miss Electric. She was the life of the party. She was a rainbow,” Ms Berry said. “She had her own business. She was an entrepreneur – fashion was her passion. When you succeed in life that way, people are jealous.”
Police have yet to make any arrests.
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said on Thursday that murders decreased by nearly 50 per cent during the month of July, and that gun arrests increased by almost as much.
The NYPD reported 383 arrests in July, an increase of 133.5 per cent compared to the same month last year. The announcement comes as the worry about violent crime spreads across the city.
“We saw a perfect storm of problems, challenges, crises all hitting together in 2020 like nothing we have ever seen in our lives,” Mr de Blasio said. “But we are fighting back, we are coming back strong.”