A Brooklyn mother of two was fatally shot on Monday while attending a vigil for a man killed in a nearby shooting hours earlier.
Shalimar Birkett, a 32-year-old resident of Sheepshead Bay, was at a memorial in Brownsville when a person got out of a car and opened fire on the crowd, police said.
She suffered a gunshot wound to the head, and was found lying in the street near Park Place and Ralph Avenue shortly after 11 p.m. Birkett was the mother of two young boys, and worked as an assistant manager at a retail store, according a family member.
Police said that Birkett was attending an outdoor vigil for Miles Bobbsemple, a 31-year-old Brownsville man who died early Monday morning after being shot in the chest.
Neither Birkett's nor Bobbsemple's killer have been caught, and police could not immediately say whether the incidents were related.
A cousin of Birkett, who declined to be named, said that the victim's brother, Neyon Hamilton, was also killed in a Brooklyn shooting in 2018. "You can imagine how devastating this is for her mother to lose two children to gun violence," the cousin said.
Gun crime has surged across New York City in the last year, with much of the violence concentrated in Central Brooklyn, Upper Manhattan, and portions of the Bronx.
After recording a 45% increase in murders and a 97% jump in overall shootings last year, the city is now on pace to eclipse those totals. There have been 146 homicides logged through May 9th, according to city data, and more than 500 victims of shooting incidents — an 83% increase since this time last year.
