A Brooklyn woman desperately tried so save her husband’s life after he was shot without warning in front of her as the couple was folding clothes in their local laundromat.
Khilifah Pierre was sharing a moment of domesticity with husband Kevon Lee when he was shot in the chest and stomach by a masked man inside Xpress Laundromat on Utica Ave. near Avenue J in Flatlands about 8 a.m. Monday.
“He was ambushed. We were doing laundry. [Kevon] was facing me and we were just talking,” Pierre, her shirt still soaked with his blood, told the Daily News in an exclusive interview. “(The shooter) came from behind my husband’s back and started shooting.”
The couple has three children.
“I fear for my life and my kids lives. That person saw my face,” Pierre said of the on-the-loose shooter. “I feel lost. I’m devastated.”
Lee was shot in the chest and the stomach, cops said. Pierre, a hospital patient care clerk, dropped to her knees and tried to revive him.
“I tried to give him chest compressions. I tried to hold up his head but he was not responding,” she said, breaking down in sobs.
Medics rushed Lee to Kings County Hospital, where he died about half an hour later.
“I have no idea who he was,” Pierre said of the gunman. “He didn’t say anything. I have so many questions.”
She described her husband as “a well-loved family man.”
”He was a working man, a hard working construction worker,” she said. “He didn’t deserve it. He didn’t deserve that. Whoever did this is a coward.”
Lee had three arrests on his record, all more than a decade ago and all for unauthorized use of a motor vehicle, police said.
Now his family is desperate for answers.
“We want justice,” said Lee’s brother Keston Lee, 41. “Whoever did this must come forward. Please, if anybody knows anything, please come forward. Our family would appreciate it.”
As children, Kevon and Keston were often mistaken for twins because of how close they were.
“We’re heartbroken,” Keston said. “We didn’t expect Memorial Day to be grieving for my brother.”
“He was never in trouble,” he added. “He went to work and came home and took care of his kids. He was a fine family man who was very protective of his kids. He was a good provider.”
A 68-year-old man was grazed in the foot by a stray bullet that pierced his shoe when the gunman opened fire, police sources said. He was taken to Mount Sinai Brooklyn and is expected to recover.
Other customers said it was quiet holiday Monday morning at the laundromat before shots rang out.
“I never even saw the guy come in,” a customer who declined to give her name said of the shooter. “He didn’t yell anything. I just heard the shots … I looked up, saw the gun and ran. I was thinking of nothing but to just save my life.”
Another customer, who also declined to give her name, said about 10 people were using the laundromat when she stepped out to get coffee up the block. She returned minutes later to the shooting’s aftermath.
“He was folding clothes when I was inside earlier,” she said of Kevon. “When I came back his partner was screaming … The woman he was with was devastated and crying.”
Police collected ballistic evidence from the laundromat as they hunt for the killer, who was wearing all black, including a black mask.
“He just came in, he shot, and he left the place — less than 10 seconds,” said Sufyan Alahmadi, 30, the laundromat’s manager, describing video surveillance he viewed. “No conversations. He just did the thing and he left.”
With Rocco Parascandola and Thomas Tracy