A week after a 28-year-old woman was fatally shot in the back in front of her family, including her 4-year-old son, a suspect has been arrested. Police say that Christopher Johnson, 21, of Brooklyn, was charged with murder and attempted murder.
On August 30, Fatima Gordon, her son Chinnarie, and other relatives were walking home from a store on Clarkson Avenue in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn when shots rang out. Her mother, Cynthia Thomas, was there and spoke to the NY Times about the horror: "Ms. Thomas dived. Looking behind her, she saw blood and knew that Ms. Gordon had been hit. She told Chinnarie to crawl toward her and not look back. 'Keep looking at grandma,' Ms. Thomas said she told the boy. Once the children were out of the way, Ms. Thomas crawled back to Ms. Gordon, who was lying on her side in a growing pool of blood. Ms. Thomas held her daughter’s head in her arms."
Gordon hoped to be a nurse, apparently inspired by her son's diabetes. A neighbor commented on Gothamist that when a child sprayed water in her face from a watergun, Gordon made the child apologize to her, "she was very nice... she didn't deserve that no one does i live on the same block it could have been anyone of us,lord help us all because we are all targets."
Three other people, one of them a 13-year-old boy, were injured in the shooting. A $12,000 reward was offered for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the shooter, with grainy surveillance images of a bicycle-riding suspect on posters. Sources tell the Post that Johnson was picked out of a lineup.
A wake was held for Gordon yesterday; her funeral is today.
