16-year-old Shemel Mercurius was shot inside a Brooklyn apartment last year by a 25-year-old man who wanted to date her.
The man, Taariq Stephens, shot Shemel after she turned down his date request. After waiting 20 minutes for an ambulance, Shemel managed to identify Taariq to authorities before she passed away.
Taariq has been charged with murder.
via NYDN:
Shemel, a junior at Edward R. Murrow High School, was babysitting her 3-year-old cousin on May 31, 2016, when Stephens allegedly showed up at the Brooklyn Ave. apartment and shot her three times with a submachine gun.
Responding NYPD officers kicked down the apartment door to find a horrifying scene.
“There was a 3-year-old male child … covered in blood crying next to the victim,” said Sgt. Ryan Habermehl, who testified that he immediately called EMS.
“It took about 20 minutes for EMS to arrive,” said Habermehl.
Officer Kyle Thomas Daly found Shemel, bleeding heavily, seated on a toy car and leaning against the wall.
“I put on gloves, took her off the car and laid her down and began rendering aid … she regained consciousness, gave me her name and date of birth,” said Daly, who has since left the NYPD to join the Suffolk County police department in Shirley, L.I.
“It took a very long time for the ambulance to come, about 20 minutes,” said Daly.
While Shemel was in and out of consciousness, the dying teen told another detective that Stephens wanted to be boyfriend and girlfriend, but she wasn’t interested, Daly said.
Shemel and Stephens met at a daycare center a week before the murder and exchanged phone numbers, authorities said.
An ambulance arrived at 6:55 p.m. and Mercurius died at Kings County Hospital at 7:57 p.m., according to testimony.
Shemel, who lived with her aunt after moving to the U.S. four years ago from Guyana, had buzzed a friend into the East Flatbush building where she was babysitting moments before she was shot.
Lona Junien took the stand to describe what she saw happening between Stephens and Shemel when she showed up to visit her friend.
“The person pushed her. The person said ‘Don’t ever lie to me.’ She was screaming, he took out the gun and shot her,” said Junien, 18.
Junien admitted on cross-examination that a detective told her Stephens was the shooter before she identified him.
If convicted, Taariq faces 25 years to life in prison for second-degree murder and weapons charges.
So sad.
