Clarisa Burgos Brooklyn mother killed in Richmond Hill, Queens ambush shooting as mom & 39 year old ‘career criminal’ driver are shot at by 3 veiled men. No arrests.
The NYPD have yet to uncover a motive in the ambush shooting in Richmond Hills, Queens early Wednesday morning just before midnight that left a Brooklyn mother dead and another vehicle occupant injured following a hail of bullets at the hands of three veiled gunmen.
Clarisa Burgos, a 28 Brooklyn mother was shot in the head and pronounced dead on the scene. A second occupant of the vehicle, a 39-year-old man who was hit several times in the torso managed to flee the scene and drive the bullet riddled vehicle a nearby police station, WPIX reported.
Cops have since said that they do not believe Burgos was the target. Burgos a mother of a four year old died several hours after she’d taken her infant son out for a ‘fun evening.’
How did Clarisa Burgos know 39 year old career criminal driver?
It remained unclear if the second vehicle occupant of a black Honda sedan, whose name was not realised was the intended target of the purported ambush. The relationship between Burgos — who had been sitting in the front passenger seat and the unidentified 39 year old driver was not made public.
Surveillance video showed two men wearing hoodies walking across Liberty Avenue near 127th Street, with a third man near them, pacing back and forth.
The three men eventually approached the vehicle that Burgos and the unidentified driver were in and fired several shots at her and the unidentified man, according to WPIX.
Not immediately clear is how Burgos and the driver came to be in Richmond Hill and how the veiled men knew how to target their victims at that particular spot.
In the video, the 39 year old driver tries to put the pedal down and get away as one of the suspects runs in front of the vehicle and shoots at the pair again.
The three men then run away after the car stalls out in the middle of the street before it starts to pull away.
Searching for answers
A man told CBS News he heard about 20 shots and that it sounded like a ‘semi-automatic’ rifle.
The unknown man had driven Burgos to the 103rd precinct station in Queens after being shot six times himself.
In the aftermath of the fatal shooting, Clarisa Burgos’ family are desperate for answers.
‘We want to know what the hell happened,’ her aunt Clover Gallart told the Gothamist.
‘Why? Why is there another child without his mother?’ asked Gallart, who said she and her sister Sonia raised Burgos.
Burgos’ sister Julia said she didn’t know where her sister had gone that night or who she was with when she left her son after taking him for a movie, ice skating and pizza Tuesday night.
‘She wanted her son to have the world,’ Julia said. ‘Zoos, aquariums, parks, everywhere. Anything he wanted to do. He had every bike that was out.’
39 year old shot driver had 29 prior arrests
‘She was so full of life, looking forward to getting older,’ Gallart added.
The driver was taken to Jamaica Hospital, where he was listed in stable condition.
Officers recovered 16 shell casings, both .45 caliber and 9mm, from the crime scene.
Of note, the injured driver has 29 arrests on his record, according to police.
Police are still searching for the suspects and say they are seeking two to three men wearing dark clothing who are believed to have fled in a dark-colored sedan.
The motive of the shooting remains under investigation. No arrests have been made as police seek to identify the suspects.
The 106th Precinct, where the shooting occurred, has seen just one homicide this year, according to recent NYPD statistics. Shootings are reportedly also down more than 66 percent for the year.
Anyone with information regarding the shooting are encouraged to reach out to Crime Stoppers at 800-577-TIPS.
