It was a sad day in New York when tragedy struck earlier this week. A 20-year-old mother, Azsia Johnson, was killed by a gunman as she pushed her three-month-old baby in the stroller on the Upper East Side. Police responded to a 911 call of shots fired in the Lexington Avenue and East 95th Street area around 8:30 PM on Wednesday. When officers arrived, they found Azsia unconscious. She was rushed to Metropolitan hospital in critical condition and was later pronounced dead.
The suspect approached Johnson from behind and fired one shot in the back of her head before fleeing on foot down East 95th Street. Police recovered a single shell casing at the scene. Thankfully, the baby was unharmed.
A press conference was held late on Wednesday in which officials said they were looking into whether Azsia knew her gunman and if he was the child’s father who she met up with before she was killed. According to Azsia’s mother, Lisa Desort, her daughter was fearful of her safety and made several domestic violence complaints to police. Johnson had been living in a domestic violence shelter in the area.
“I kept telling them, he’s threatening my daughter’s life and they didn’t believe me and now my daughter is dead,” Desort said. “If you say somebody abused me and the officer doesn’t believe you and they say ‘let him take a walk,’ and he comes back one hour later and kills you, this is what happened to my daughter,” Desort said.
Mayor Adams weighed in on the tragic death at a news briefing on Wednesday with New York State Attorney General Letitia James. “This entire day we have been addressing the problem of over proliferation of guns on our street, how readily accessible they are and how there is just no fear in using these guns on innocent New Yorkers,” the mayor said. “This is the result of that.”
Adams continued, “These are real lives, when a mother is pushing a baby carriage down the block and is shot at point-blank range it shows just how this national problem is impacting families.” The NYPD has reportedly been searching for the baby’s father. As of yesterday, Azsia’s killer remains at large.