NY mother killed after addressing man who groped her
Shadina Smith and her fiancé returned to the street to confront her alleged groper afterward, and she ended up dead.
A young Harlem mother was shot and killed after she and her fiancé confronted a man who had groped her on the street.
Shadina Smith, 29, had just left her apartment on West 150th Street in the early afternoon on Jan. 16, when a man grabbed her. She returned to her apartment, where she told her fiancé what happened. Then, the couple went outside to address the man.
The confrontation somehow escalated into gunfire, and the couple was shot inside the first-floor hallway of their apartment building.
According to The New York Daily News, NYPD detectives believe the shots were fired from outside the building. There have been no arrests in the case.
Smith’s aunt, Corine Booker, said the situation has been a “horrific nightmare.”
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“She was very invested in her son,” Booker said, “and his future. I hate that he won’t be able to know how wonderful and how resilient she was. She did not pout. We just want to make sure to give him all that love.”
Smith’s son, Uriel Hall, is one-and-a-half years old. A close friend has begun an online fundraiser “to give her the memorial she deserves, to honor her memory and say our last goodbyes.”
Booker said Smith was “completely outgoing and full of life. She always had a really big smile on her face. She had a contagious spirit. She could get along with everybody. Everybody feels close to her, everybody was her best friend, everybody loved her. People really loved Shadina because she loved people.”
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Another Harlem woman was attacked in January. A woman was accosted by three men who stole her phone and brutally bit her on her face. A demonstration took place late last month in the historic New York City neighborhood with demonstrators chanting, “Protect Black women!”
“If we don’t do it, who [will],” said SAVE Director Omar Jackson. “It’s our responsibility, it’s our duty to protect our women and children in our community.”
New York City experienced an increase in violent crime, including fatal shootings, in 2020, despite the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. Murders in the city were up more than 40 percent from 2019.
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