A beloved 69-year-old grandmother heading home from a family Thanksgiving dinner was shot to death outside her Brooklyn apartment building by a killer who bolted from the scene, police said Friday.
Veteran day-care worker Angelina Renita Parker was found lying on the ground with a gunshot wound to the neck outside her Bedford-Stuyvesant home after neighbors followed a blood trail to the side of her Bainbridge St. building in NYCHA’s Brevoort Houses just before 11 p.m. Thursday.
“Such a senseless death,” her mother Mary Parker, 89, told the Daily News. “It’s just devastating … She was a kind, loving person. A go-to person, always willing to help.”
The victim was the mother of a son, grandmother of four and a revered figure in the neighborhood. Mary Parker recalled how her daughter was set to take over as her caretaker next month.
“She was there for everybody,” recalled Parker. “She just filled her day just doing things for everybody. She would always call and say, ‘Ma, do you need anything?’”
The victim was pronounced dead at Brookdale Medical Center, where doctors discovered the fatal gunshot wound to her neck, police said.
“It came as a shock,” said neighbor Betty Parker, no relation to the victim. “She had just come from her son’s house for Thanksgiving. She always made you smile. She gave you the shirt off her back.”
Police had yet to make an arrest or locate any witnesses who either saw the killing or heard any gunfire Thursday night.
Parker grew up in the building where she was gunned down, according to her longtime neighbors.
“We were like sister and brother, we grew up together,” said Breevort Houses resident Jerome Hicks. “All the gatherings we had in the projects, all the families would get together.”
Parker was a teacher beloved for lending a helping hand to anyone who asked, and word of her slaying traveled quickly through the neighborhood, recalled the 65-year-old Hicks.
“She was always helping people,” he said. “She would educate you if you asked for help, if you had a speech problem. She was a great person and she will be missed. My sister called me and told me she got shot in the neck. It didn’t have to happen like that. There’s too many guns in this neighborhood.”
Police were scouring the area for surveillance video to help identify the fugitive gunman, cops said.
