By NAN STAFF WRITER
News Americas, NEW YORK, NY, Mon. Mar. 21, 2022: New York police are looking for a woman who allegedly sparked the deadly shooting of a black, Caribbean immigrant Friday.
Twenty-six-year-old Jamaican immigrant Stephen Stuart, 24, was in line to buy a coffee with a friend at a Dunkin’ location on E. Gun Hill Rd. near Mattie Harris Pl. in Williamsbridge on Friday, March 18th.
As he approached the register to pay for his iced coffee, a store employee said, a customer who the line at the counter.
She then said to them: “Why are you coming so close to me? Why are you looking at my face? My boyfriend is outside.”
The woman paid for her iced coffee via Apple Pay and left the shop shortly before Stuart, the employee said.
“She tells them to back off because they probably have COVID,” the source said.
The victim and his friend then left the shop, but the woman followed them out, the source said. The woman can be seen on surveillance video making a call.
She then met up with a man between 17 and 25 years old and had another confrontation with Stewart, police said. Police sources said the man was her boyfriend.
Two blocks away on Holland Ave. near E. 213 St., Stuart was shot in the torso just after 1:30 p.m. the man believed to be the irate customer’s boyfriend, police said.
Medics rushed Stuart to Jacobi Hospital but he could not be saved.
Cops released a video Sunday of the woman who allegedly sparked the deadly shooting.
Police told Stuart’s devastated aunt that the shooter approached him outside the Dunkin’ and followed him on foot before he fired off one shot.
“Stephen didn’t do anything to her. She was pushing him to do it,” said the woman, who was too terrified to give her name. “What kind of woman is that?”
Stuart moved to New York in December and worked at a Jamaican restaurant in the Bronx.
“He sent money back to support his mom and two sisters,” said the aunt. “When I got out of the hospital last week he cooked, he cleaned, he did everything for me.”
Upon receiving a call in Jamaica her son was dead, Stuart’s mother fainted and was hospitalized.
“He didn’t deserve it. He really didn’t deserve it,” his aunt said through tears. “He was a very good soul.”
Police are still searching for the shooter, who is described as a Black man last seen wearing a red hooded sweatshirt.
