It was just past 1 p.m. on a Wednesday when a Brooklyn mother stepped outside with her two children. She was heading out to pick up a few things, nothing unusual, just a short neighborhood errand. When a loud crack split the air nearby, she thought it was fireworks.
It was not fireworks.
By 1:46 p.m., her 7-month-old daughter was pronounced dead at Woodhull Hospital in Brooklyn after a stray bullet struck the infant while she sat in her stroller near the intersection of Humboldt Street and Moore Street in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn. The shooting, which the NYPD says appears to be gang-related, triggered a city-wide manhunt that remained active Wednesday evening in Brooklyn
How the shooting unfolded
The shots were fired around 1:16 p.m. by a person riding on the back of a moped, according to the New York City Police Department. The street was occupied at the time. Several adults were present, and two strollers were in the immediate area when the gunman opened fire into the crowd.
After the shooting, the two suspects fled on the moped but crashed into an oncoming vehicle approximately two blocks away. One suspect was transported to a hospital and is being held as a person of interest in connection with an unrelated investigation. The moped driver remains at large. The NYPD has deployed bloodhounds as part of the active search, and the vehicle involved in the crash has been taken into evidence.
A 63-year-old bystander named Vincent Valcissel was exiting a nearby supermarket in Brooklyn when the shots rang out. He described hearing the sound, instinctively ducking, and then turning to see a woman on the ground with her baby.
The mother, according to sources, rushed her daughter into a nearby bodega after the gunfire. It was there, looking down at the stroller, that she understood what had happened.
City officials call it a breaking point for Brooklyn
NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch addressed the shooting at a news conference Wednesday, calling it a tragedy that shocks the conscience of the entire city. Mayor Zohran Mamdani also spoke publicly, urging New Yorkers not to treat this kind of loss as background noise. Both officials framed the killing not as an isolated event but as part of a pattern the city can no longer absorb as routine.
Tisch confirmed the gang-related nature of the shooting and said detectives are working to piece together the events that led to it.
A mother’s account
The infant’s mother later told reporters her daughter was innocent and had done nothing to deserve what happened. She had only gone outside for a simple errand. Her account reduces the event to its starkest reality: a mother, a stroller, a short walk, and a bullet that was never meant for her child but found her anyway.
The baby was 7 months old.
The investigation is ongoing. Anyone with information is encouraged to contact the NYPD.
