The innocent 11-year-old girl fatally shot in broad daylight by a gunman on a moped has been identified as Kyhara Tay, police said Tuesday.
Kyhara was visiting a nail salon with a pal just before 5 p.m. Monday when the shooter opened fire — targeting another man at Westchester Avenue and Fox Street in Foxhurst, authorities said.
The bullet instead whizzed onto the next block and struck the pre-teen in the stomach, cops said.
Kyhara, who was outside New Kim Nails on Fox Street – waiting for a relative who was inside, according to police sources – walked into the salon after being shot and passed out, witnesses said.
“She was right next to me when it happened,” the girl’s friend, 18-year-old Lillian Johnson, said Monday.
“She got shot and then she came into the store … like she was trying to get away from the gunshots. She was holding her stomach saying, ‘Ow!’”
Kyhara soon passed out, Johnson said.
“She sat down in the chair and then she started getting unresponsive — she like leaned over on the chair,” Johnson said.
“And then they pulled down her jacket, checked the wound [where] she got shot in the stomach and then shortly after that she ended up passing out on the ground.”
The girl was rushed to Lincoln Hospital, where she died.
Yuberkis Bena, 48 – who was on the scene and came to the young victim’s aid Monday – returned Tuesday with a white fluffy teddy bear.
Bena was standing right next to Kyhara when the shots rang out – and her own son was still in the car, she said.
“When I hear the shots, I tell my son, ‘Get down! Get down and get down in the car,’” Bena said. “Then I took my son out of the car, and I go to the salon. I thought at the beginning [that Kyhara] was just like nervous.”
“When I went inside, she fell [over] on the ground,” she added. “I saw her bleeding and I pulled her T-shirt, and I asked the lady in the nail salon to give me napkins. I was pressing, cause she had a hole. I said, ‘She shot! She shot! She got shot! Call the ambulance.’ So I was putting pressure on her belly.”
“My son was standing right there,” she said as she broke down crying. “It could’ve happened to my son, you know.”
“I could not sleep at all last night,” and neither did her son, she said.
Now she tells her son to “go straight home” after school and not to “stay outside.”
“And I’m not going to bring him to, like, nail stuff,” she added. “I keep them home.”
The man the shooter was aiming for had tried, unsuccessfully, to duck into an assisted living facility on Fox Street before running south on Westchester Avenue, where the gunman tried to shoot him, police sources said.
Quick-moving footage shows the intended target running down the block, trying to get away from a duo on a scooter, before the man riding on the back of the moped opened fire.
Kyhara is the latest young victim of gun violence in the city. Several teenagers and children have been shot either intentionally or as innocent bystanders throughout the five boroughs in recent months.
Ada Candelaria, 70, left flowers at the scene of the deadly shooting Tuesday morning.
While Candelaria said she never knew the young victim, she is still calling for justice.
“I came because I live in the area and I’m a mother and a grandmother. I feel the pain the mother and the family is feeling,” she said, putting her hand over her heart. “It’s getting crazy, out of control. It’s lawless. I don’t know what’s going on. It’s a shame – you can’t walk with your children around because you don’t know what’s going to happen.”
“The politicians are talking, but they’re not doing anything,” she added. “You have to take actions. I want justice for her even though I didn’t know her. It could be anyone. It could be me, it could be my children, my grandchildren, you, your children…. It hurts even more when they kill a child.”
“The judge should put [the shooters] away for good and throw away the keys.”
