Gunfire hit a 5-year-old girl Friday night outside a memorial in the Bronx for a man who died in a homicide earlier in the week, witnesses and police said.
The girl — whose mother had just bought her an Icee treat at a deli, a witness said — was riding in a gold Nissan near the memorial site, which was decorated with white balloons and flickering candles on E. 214th St. near Holland St. in Olinville near its border with Williamsbridge.
Suddenly, someone in a silver Volkswagen Jetta fired bullets at the Nissan, said police and witnesses.
“They were showing love to a guy who had just passed,” said a witness who declined to give her name. “Two cars pulled up and pow, pow, pow, there was shooting.”
Witnesses said they heard at least six shots.
“Then they sped away,” said the witness.
The gold Nissan carrying the little girl — and apparently driven by her father — didn’t travel far.
It stopped outside a laundromat a short distance away, and the father got out of the car with his daughter in his arms.
“She was shot behind her back,” said Zoila Peguero, who witnessed the scene at the laundromat. “He was crying, ‘Please! Please! Help! Help!’”
“It was really shocking — oh my God, he was going crazy,” said Peguero. She quoted the desperate father’s shouts: “My daughter! My daughter! She’s shot!”
“The police came right away and put them in a police car,” Peguero said.
Police said the girl was taken to Montefiore Hospital, where she was reported in stable condition.
Witnesses said the police grabbed a shirtless man wearing a do-rag from the other car and took him into custody. Police would not confirm that anyone was apprehended in the case.
Around 12:30 a.m. Thursday, a man, 26, was fatally shot in the chest and and shoulder on E. 213th St. and Holland Ave., near the scene of the memorial Friday evening.
A second man, 34, was wounded in that incident. Police have not released the men’s names.
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