Zurana Horton (at left in dark pants, dark jacket) stands as bullets rain down.
With other victims tumbling around her, a fatally shot Horton doubles over.
Horton lies dying near a pool of her blood as the wounded victims cower in fear.
(
)
Rapt jurors yesterday watched surveillance video of the chilling moment that a Brooklyn mom was fatally struck by stray gunfire and slowly fell over into a pool of her own blood.
The disturbing evidence was made public at the trial of the two men accused of killing Zurana Horton from a Brownsville rooftop in 2011.
Horton, 34, was walking with one of her 12 children when Andrew Lopez, 20, fired from the rooftop on the orders of his brother Jonathan Carrasquillo, 24, prosecutors charge.
Also shot were a woman named Unique Armstead, who was walking near Horton, and an 11-year-old girl who was passing by.
Yesterday, Armstead told jurors at the Brooklyn Supreme Court trial about the moment she was struck in the shooting, which was allegedly sparked by a gangland territorial beef.
“At the time, I thought it was a brick, but it was a bullet,” testified Armstead, who was walking with her son and who can be seen in the video stumbling against a building after she is shot.
When prosecutor Seth Goldman asked whether she shielded her son with her body, Armstead quietly answered, “Yes.”
“When me and my son were on the floor, I noticed Mrs. Horton fall down. I honestly thought she was shot in the head. There was blood.”
Armstead also testified that she heard a group of young men arguing about a gun shortly before the shooting, which matches up with prosecutors’ claim that Carrasquillo ordered Lopez to the roof with the gun after a dispute between their 8 Block gang and the rival Young Guns crew.
The talk of guns had made Armstead nervous, especially since she was with her young son.
“I speed-walked to my son, and I held him. I was scared. I was trying to get out of harm’s way,” she testified.
Armstead said she sought safety for herself and her son in a store, but when activity on the street seemed to have settled, she walked back outside — where a bullet went straight through her arm and she saw Horton killed.
Brooklyn Supreme Court Judge Vincent Del Giudice briefly sealed the courtroom at the request of prosecutors because their next witness had been threatened with death by the alleged shooter’s brother.
The fearful witness had entered the courtroom with hood over his head, Del Giudice said when the courtroom was reopened.
“The man is an emotional wreck,” the judge said before postponing the man’s testimony until Monday.