A 7-month-old girl fatally shot in Brooklyn had just taken her first steps and recently said her first word, “mama,” when her life was cut short by a gangbanger’s bullet, the little girl’s devastated mother told the Daily News.
Kaori Patterson-Moore was shot in the head by a stray bullet 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.
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 a 21-year-old person of interest into custody later in the afternoon, NYPD sources said.
Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said the shooting is believed to be gang-related and the baby was an unintended target.
“I want justice,” Moore said. “They could have killed my son and my daughter.”
The 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 shooter 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 the rear passenger 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 the shoeless rear passenger 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 the injured rear passenger to Brooklyn Hospital Center, where he was taken into police custody for a domestic-violence-related robbery, according to Tisch.
He was wearing the same clothing as the baby’s caught-on-video shooter, Tisch said.
Charges against him related to the shooting were not immediately filed, and his name was not released. He is a known gang associate from NYCHA’s Marcy Houses, police said.