‘Devastated’ parents of slain 11-year-old girl visit Bronx crime scene
The heartbroken parents of an 11-year-old girl senselessly cut down by a stray bullet made a tearful visit Tuesday to the Bronx sidewalk where she was fatally shot.
Kyhara Tay’s parents and grandmother mourned the slain girl at a makeshift memorial that continues to grow outside a nail salon on Fox Street, where the girl was struck in the stomach and mortally wounded around 5 p.m. Monday.
Her mother, dressed in black, knelt and prayed as she sobbed at the scene.
“Why her?” cried one relative.
“R.I.P. KyKy,” the girl’s mom wrote on one balloon — one of several released into the heavens.
“We just want justice,” Norka Sanchez, Kyhara’s aunt. said at the memorial. “Justice for Kyhara. That’s all I can say.
“We’re talking about 11 years old,” she continued, “with her whole future. The whole family’s devastated. At this point, we cannot bring her back. But we want someone to say something. Please, please. Say something if you know.”
Among those paying their respects at the scene were Kyhara’s schoolmates from the Bronx Academy for Multi-Media, MS 424.
The girl was named after the cub Kiara in Disney’s animated movie “Lion King II,” with the “Y” and “H” — her mom’s initials — added.
“Dad is telling me that Kyhara is the daughter of lions because the family is so close that they’re always together, like a pride,” NYPD Sgt. Carols Nieves told reporters after speaking with the family.
He said the girl also liked to refer to herself as a “Camborican” to reflect her heritage — her father is Cambodian and her mother is Puerto Rican.
Police said the gunman opened fire on a group of men nearby but instead struck the innocent girl, who stumbled into the salon in shock and bleeding.
She was rushed to Lincoln Hospital, where she was pronounced dead.
Police released surveillance footage of the shooting but have not made an arrest in the case as of Tuesday afternoon.
The department is offering a $10,000 reward for the arrest of the gunman.
“They feel comfortable walking around with guns, they feel comfortable chasing individuals at 3, 4 o’clock in the afternoon,” city Councilman Rafael Salamanca, who represents the South Bronx, fumed at the scene.
“They feel comfortable just shooting regardless of who they’re shooting, whether there’s children or kids in our community,” he said. “And it’s wrong.”
Kyhara’s death is the latest in a string of shootings of young people in the Big Apple.
Last Wednesday, the 17-year-old son of an NYPD cop was shot in the arm across from his Queens high school. Last Thursday night in the Bronx, a 14-year-old boy was shot in the arm and a 15-year-old was shot in the leg by a pair of gunmen.
Two nights earlier a 17-year-old boy was fatally shot outside a Bronx grocery.
Earlier in the month, an 18-year-old girl was shot in the lobby of a Crown Heights building, while a 13-year-old and 14-year-old were shot outside Central Park.
Last month a 14-year-old girl was hit by a stray bullet in the neck and two 18-year-old boys were also shot in a gang-related hit, police said. All three teens survived the shooting.
In March a 3-year-old girl was wounded while she was leaving a Brownsville, Brooklyn, daycare center with her dad, and 12-year-old Kade Lewin was shot and killed in East Flatbush while sitting in a parked minivan eating dinner.
