The trio of crooks who shot and wounded Shaun Winfield in Brooklyn got away with it. But more than 20 years later, Winfield has died of complications from the shooting — and so the cold case is now being investigated as a homicide.
Winfield, a 42-year-old father of three sons known for his big hugs and love of motorcycles, was admitted to Elmhurst Hospital last November with sepsis.
Desperate to be home for the holidays, he was released on Christmas Eve only to die at his mother’s Queens home later that day.
The medical examiner on June 9 ruled his death a homicide from complications relating to his two-decade old gunshot wounds.
Winfield was just 21 when he was shot at Legion St. and Dumont Ave. in Brownsville, Brooklyn, about 3 a.m. Jan. 13, 2000. His foster brother, Daniel Gomez, was with Winfield and remembers it like it was yesterday.
He and Winfield, laborers for an advertising circular company in Canarsie, had finished their overnight shift early and stopped at a store on their way home. As they left the shop, Gomez said, three men with guns confronted them.
“I’m just as broke as you,” Gomez told the suspects.
“They didn’t want to hear that,” Gomez recounted. “When I raised up my hands, I looked at Shaun, I looked back at the guy in front of me, and I hear two shots.”
Winfield’s mother, Veronica Winfield Pottinger, recalled what her son told her of the incident. “He knew just by looking at the guy’s face that he was going to shoot him no matter what,” she said. “When the guy asked for his wallet he gave him everything. He still knew he was going to get shot.”
Winfield, wounded, ran off and hopped into his truck.
Gomez, still on the street with the crooks, dodged death when the gunman aiming at him pulled the trigger — “but nothing came out.”
“It was a blessing,” said Gomez, now 40 and living in North Carolina. “He double-cocked the gun and jammed the gun up.
“That was my cue to run — and I ran.
“And then all three started shooting at me.”
They missed.
Winfield drove away from the scene in his truck and passed out a short time later. Police found him and he was rushed to the hospital.
He was shot in the stomach and the bullet exited through his buttocks, his mother said. Doctors repaired a severed artery but he was still left with an open wound that never fully healed, leaked bodily fluids and required constant bandaging.
Gomez, who was not hurt in the shooting, believes he and Winfield were set up by a colleague who left work with them but stepped away when the robbery unfolded.
But there were no immediate arrests — and there haven’t been any since, police said.
Winfield was determined to move on with his life, his mother said.
“He still did everything he needed to do,” she said. “Raised his son, rode his bikes, moved to Maryland, got a good job. He was back and forth because I was here and so he would come stay with me when he had the time.”
Late last year, he returned to the city from Baltimore, where he had been living and working remotely in information technology. He also carried out repairs in his mother’s home.
Now his mom will raise his 17-year-old son the best she can. His other two children live with their mother.
“It’s hard,” Winfield’s mother said. “I miss him. He was my go-to person. And I’m just trying to keep his son grounded, to let him know that he’s not here, but he’s still with you.”
