A bleeding Guyanese-born Brooklyn baby-sitter shared the first name of her cold-blooded killer with cops before taking her final breath, police sources said Wednesday.
A barely conscious Shemel Mercurius, lying on a toy car in her family’s Brooklyn apartment in New York, died from gunshot wounds shortly after fingering her killer, the New York Daily News reported.
Cops withheld the suspect’s name as a video surfaced showing a man armed with an assault rifle coercing his way inside the home where the 16-year-old was babysitting her nephew.
The manhunt for the fugitive suspect is continuing, with cops saying the rifle-toting man wore a black hoodie and red sweatpants with black stripes.
For the Mercurius family who resides in East Flatbush, Brooklyn, their lives can and will never be the same again after the life of Shemel Mercurius was taken in their once lively and warm apartment.
Four years ago, Shemel had moved from her homeland, Guyana, to reside in East Flatbush with her aunt and cousin and other relatives.
The 16-year-old girl had been babysitting her three-year-old cousin, Josia, inside of the apartment she shared with her external family when the murder took place.
According to initial reports, she had been trying to prevent a gun-toting assailant and his female companion from entering her home.
The U.S. Daily News stated that a video camera caught the man trying to force his way into the apartment around 18:00hrs on the day in question before Shemel finally opened the door and let him and the woman enter.
It was reported that the intruders were seen on video fleeing the sixth-floor apartment after the young female was mortally wounded as her tiny cousin cried loudly.
Police officers said the dead girl’s boyfriend was “a person of interest” in the shooting. She was shot twice — once in each bicep — with one of the bullets punching through her arm and into her chest, police said.
The girl’s aunt, Latoya Price, took Shemel in four years ago when the girl immigrated with her dad from Guyana. The family was hoping she would attend college in the U.S.
“She’s not my niece, she’s like my daughter,” said the distraught Price, 31, on the morning after the slaying. “I feel like I gave birth to her.”
Mercurius, a junior at Edward R. Murrow High School, died Tuesday night at Kings County Hospital after she was hit by two bullets.
