The incident took place on Wednesday, and the suspect remained at large on early Thursday.
Tragedy has struck New York again after a 20-year-old woman was killed by a gunman while pushing her three-month-old baby in a stroller on the Upper East Side earlier this week.
As NBC New York reports, police responded to a 911 call regarding shots fired in the Lexington Avenue and East 95th Street area around 8:30 PM on Wednesday. Upon arrival, they found the woman, Azsia Johnson, unconscious.
After being transported to a hospital Johnson was pronounced dead. Despite the untimely tragedy, thankfully, it’s been noted that her baby wasn’t hurt.
During a press conference that was held late on Wednesday, top police officials said they were looking into whether the gunman and his victim had a relationship, or if he could possibly be the child’s 22-year-old father who she met up with earlier that night, though those questions appear to remain unanswered at this time.
The late mother was approached from behind and shot once in the back of the head before her killer took off on foot down East 95th Street. Police noted that one shell casing was recovered at the scene.
New York Mayor Eric Adams had already spent his day talking about his city’s struggles with gun violence and even announced a ghost gun crackdown with New York State Attorney General Letitia James and met with Democratic U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand to discuss gun trafficking before he stood alongside NYPD Commissioner Keechant Sewell to brief the media on the latest incident.
“This entire day we have been addressing the problem of overproliferation of guns on our street, how readily accessible they are and how there is just no fear in using these guns on innocent New Yorkers,” the mayor said on Wednesday. “This is the result of that.”
Adams continued, “These are real lives, when a mother is pushing a baby carriage down the block and is shot at point-blank range it shows just how this national problem is impacting families.”
He also insisted that he and other authorities will do all they can to find the killer and hold him responsible. “We need to make sure this innocent person receives the justice we’re asking for.”
