With street justice comes the worst kind of collateral damage.
This year’s tally of innocent victims in stray-bullet shootings now totals 10, with 15-year-old Vada Vasquez joining a tragic list that already includes a 5-year- old girl and a 92-year-old grandmother — all gunned down by cowardly thugs who decided to take matters into their own hands. Seven have died.
“It’s senseless. She was just minding her business coming home from school, but bullets have no discrimination,” said Gloria Cruz, who held a candle at a vigil for Vasquez yesterday.
“These young men are walking around thinking they are soldiers. They have these feuds and they think they can only take care of it with guns, but the damage goes so much deeper than their beef.”
Vasquez continues to cling to life after being shot in the head on her way home from Bronx Latin HS Monday afternoon. Police believe the shooting stems from a Rikers Island jail beef.
“These kids, they don’t go to school, then they start wars with each other and innocent people like my sister get hurt,” said Mandy Boodram, Vasquez’s sibling.
TRAGIC TOLL: SEE 2009’s STAY BULLET VICTIMS
Cops were questioning two men connected to the shooting late yesterday, although investigators were still hunting for the suspected triggerman, who remained at large.
Investigators say the shooter — who rode up on a bike to the corner of Home Street and Prospect Avenue in Morrisania — was aiming for 19-year-old gangster Tyrone Creighton, who was struck in the leg and abdomen. But one of his bullets struck Vasquez as she stood nearby.
Creighton, who is out on bail on attempted-murder and drug charges, was targeted because one of his two older brothers, who are both in Rikers awaiting trial for murder, beat up a man in jail and the gunman was out for revenge.
“A young life with all the promise in the world,” Mayor Bloomberg said. “It’s really very tragic. Hopefully, she’ll find some way to pull through this.”
Vasquez’s devastated mother, who relatives said has sat at her daughter’s bedside since the shooting, joins in the agony shared by many others around the city who have dealt with the senseless loss of a loved one struck down by an act of sheer recklessness.
Karen Bosier, 39, said it never gets easier, even for her 5-year-old granddaughter, Diamond Flowers, who was struck on the cheek by a bullet in May in Astoria, Queens, and narrowly survived.
“She talks about the shooting all the time,” Bosier said. “She tells me, ‘I’m scared they are going to shoot me again.’ We avoid [the street where it happened] because Diamond doesn’t want to go there, because she’s afraid she’ll get shot again.
“She attends kindergarten and is doing well in school, but the problem is, she is afraid to leave the house and walk around.”
Diamond’s shooting remains unsolved, as do many similar cases.
While police don’t keep precise data on stray shootings, a survey of nine cases that got media attention shows five remain open with no arrests.
In almost all the nine cases, the plague of gang violence — with its pathetic reliance on “no snitching” and summary street justice — played a role or is suspected.
The most recent unsolved stray-bullet murder involved an 87-year-old grandmother, Anna Surman, who was shot in the courtyard of her Coney Island housing project, where she had gone to feed some neighborhood cats. Investigators believe the Aug. 2 shooting was gang-related, but have yet to make an arrest.
Cops were quicker to close the case in the fatal shooting of 92-year-old Sadie Mitchell, who was struck down on Oct. 20 as she watched a game show on television. A bullet had crashed through the window of her Bronx apartment.
Her suspected killer, Jamal Blair, 18, told police he had fired into the air, trying to chase off gang members at a nearby housing project.
On Oct. 2, 13-year-old Kevin Miller, a high-school freshman, was gunned down in Cambria Heights, Queens, on his way home from school when two Crips gang members allegedly opened fire on a car wash. Two teens were later arrested.
And on Sept. 22, 25-year-old Aisha Santiago was shot down in front of her 9-year-old son on their way home from a Mott Haven coin laundry as gang members got into a gun battle.
Jesselle Page’s death on June 10 also left scars on others, when the 44-year-old woman was shot to death in front of her 8-year-old grandnephew as they walked through an East Williamsburg, Brooklyn, playground. A man arguing over a woman had opened fire. The suspected gunman was picked up the next day.
Like Miller, Flowers and Vasquez, most of the victims were very young. In June, 11-year-old Davonte Kelly miraculously survived being shot in the head as he walked through a ball field in Brooklyn’s Starrett City.
At first, the Little Leaguer thought he’d been struck in the head by a line drive, and discovered three hours later, after emergency-room doctors had taken an X-ray, that he actually had a slug lodged in his skull.
That story had a happy ending, but most do not.
Thirteen-year-old Christopher Owen’s life was snuffed out at an April barbecue in Harlem when a thug opened fire on the crowd, striking the teen in the head. Two others were wounded. The case remains unsolved.
Also unsolved is the year’s first tragic stray-bullet shooting. Nyasia Pryear, a 17-year-old honors student, was gunned down at a teen mixer in Bedford-Stuyvesant when a gunman opened fire on the crowd.
Additional reporting by Murray Weiss, Larry Celona, C.J. Sullivan, Douglas Montero and Joe Mollica