NYC dad tells daughter she is “beautiful” right before being shot dead

Minutes before he was fatally gunned down near his home on Easter evening, a New York City father had a chat with his 5-year-old daughter. Unfortunately, the last thing he would ever say to her is that she’s “beautiful.”

“Why do you like that dress?” Jerome Spence, 26, of Brooklyn, reportedly asked his daughter, Camille, according to Michelle Hutchinson, who is Spence’s mother.

“Because I feel beautiful when I put it on,” Camille answered.

“You’re not just beautiful when you put on the dress,” Spence told her. “You’re beautiful all the time.”

Immediately after this conversation, Spence chatted with his brother, walked outside, and less than a block away, an attacker shot him in the face, neck and chest, the New York Daily News reported. Bleeding, Spence managed to find his way into a nearby apartment building, where police found him collapsed and unconscious on a second-floor stair landing.

Another senseless shooting

The young father’s friends and family told the NY Daily News they cannot imagine why anyone would want to hurt Spence, who they said kept to himself at home when not working his construction job.

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“He was a kind person,” said Hutchinson, 43, to the News. “It’s kind of unreal thinking that this happened to him, when he don’t have beef, have arguments, have problems with people.

No motive mentioned

“I cannot make sense of this,”said Denmoy Chushnie, 23, Spence’s brother. “He was in no gang -nothing like that. He never liked guns, really.”

“It’s senseless. It’s so shocking,” family friend Jeff Farrell, 41, told the News. “We were inside the apartment and one of his friends came banging on the door saying he got shot.”

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A New York City Police Department spokesman has said that the agency has no idea of a motive.

Spence’s family said they believe the bullets must have been intended for someone else. Spence had plans to continue his education, they said.