Allen McQueen of the Bronx, N.Y., was taking his 1-year-old daughter to play in the park when he was approached by a gunman who shot him in the head around 1:20 p.m. Tuesday, the New York Post reports. The 21-year-old dad, who was reportedly carrying the child when he was approached, attempted to shield the baby when he was shot. As he fell, his daughter, Taylor, was thrown to the sidewalk.
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“The guy who got shot had the baby in his hands. He was trying to run for cover because he was trying to protect the little girl,” witness Louis Mestre, 32, told the Post. “Once he got hit, he went down, and the child went down with him. The guy who did the shooting was running away and laughing. He seemed like an insane person.”
The gunman reportedly shot at McQueen once, missing, before chasing him down and firing twice more, hitting him once. The shooter fled the scene in a Mercedes-Benz, leaving eyewitnesses to comfort the crying child.
“My first instinct was to get the baby," Arielle Corkery, 23, a mother of six, said. “When I got to her, she was full of blood. I didn’t know if it was her blood or her dad’s.”
McQueen was pronounced dead at Jacobi Medical Center. Taylor did not have any visible injuries and was taken home by a relative. The child’s mother was reportedly no longer in a relationship with McQueen, but the two were still on good terms.
“She said it’s sad that her daughter will grow up without her father,’’ a relative of Taylor’s mom told the Post. The woman said that McQueen was a good dad.
According to the Post, police sources believe that his killing could be gang-related.
“I’m just shocked that something like this would happen … because it involved a child,” Mestre said. “But there has been a turf war going on here lately. This is such a dangerous place to live.”
Read more at the New York Post.
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