A 69-year-old woman using a walker was shot and killed in East Harlem on Wednesday afternoon when gunfire erupted on the sidewalk, the police said.
The woman, Robin Wright, was shot in the face near East 110th Street and Madison Avenue shortly before 12:30 p.m., the police said. She was taken to Mount Sinai Morningside hospital, where she was pronounced dead. No arrests have been made and an investigation is continuing, the police said.
The killing was the result of a shootout among three men, who fled on foot after Ms. Wright, a bystander, was struck, according to an internal police document and a law enforcement official with knowledge of the matter.
Ms. Wright, who lived in a building near where the shooting occurred, had been on her way home from lunch, her friend Sonya Hampton, 59, said. She had recently graduated to using a walker after a hospital stay had left her in a wheelchair, Ms. Hampton said. On Wednesday, the walker stood by itself on the sidewalk, circled by police tape, near what appeared to be a pool of blood.
“She liked to walk around in the morning,” Ms. Hampton said of Ms. Wright, her neighbor, who lived down the hall. “It could have been any of us coming from a store.”
Ms. Hampton said she had been present on the sidewalk nearby when the shots were fired.
“I turned around to see where it was coming from, and when it stopped, she was on the ground,” she said. She said she had run to help, and had been with Ms. Wright in the last moments of her life.
“I lay on the floor with her while she was bleeding,” Ms. Hampton said. “I didn’t leave her.”
Yusef Salaam, the city councilman who represents East Harlem, visited the site of the shooting on Wednesday evening with Iesha Sekou, the founder of Street Corner Resources, a local nonprofit that seeks to stop gun and gang violence.
“I grew up right here,” Mr. Salaam said. “My heart is grieving right now for the family.” He and Ms. Sekou condemned the sale of illegal guns in East Harlem and said the community needed to invest in local youth to help prevent further violence.
“We can’t put a Band-Aid on this issue,” Ms. Sekou said.
Ms. Wright’s neighbors gathered on Wednesday in front of the building where she had lived. Juanita Perez, 76, seemed haunted by the death.
“You never know,” Ms. Perez said as she gazed at Ms. Wright’s abandoned walker, before trailing off.
Sonia Gibson, 66, sat on a stoop nearby, watching the flurry of police officers, emergency vehicles and onlookers. Friends and family members had been calling her in a panic all afternoon, she said, because they had heard about the killing of an older woman with a walker. Ms. Gibson’s own walker leaned on a wall nearby.
She said there had been a number of shootings in the neighborhood during the years she had lived there, but she could not remember anyone being killed in broad daylight before.
The community is filled with older adults like herself and Ms. Wright, who often leave their apartments in the late morning to spend the day running errands, visiting a nearby deli or socializing on the sidewalk, Ms. Gibson said. The idea of a gunfight breaking out at lunchtime was shocking.
“In the middle of the day? You can’t do that,” she said. “Between 10 and 6, we should be safe.”
Chelsia Rose Marcius contributed reporting.
Liam Stack is a Times reporter who covers the culture and politics of the New York City region.
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