Suspect of 16-year-old murder victim turns himself in after teenager shares his name as she died
Suspect of 16-year-old murder victim turns himself in after teenager shares his name as she died
The suspect in the murder of a 16-year-old babysitter has turned himself in after the teenager told officers his name with her dying breaths.
Shemel Mercurius was caring for three-year-old Josiah in her Brooklyn, New York, apartment when she was gunned down on Wednesday.
Police then used surveillance video and, with the help of the victim, they said the shooter was 24-year-old Taariq Stephens.
Cops said he was seen getting into an elevator, apparently armed with a 40 caliber Kel-Tec submachine gun, before running away from the sixth-floor apartment.
According to the New York Daily News, he was being questioned at the 67th Precinct after surrendering to police Thursday evening.
NYPD Chief of Detectives Robert Boyce told the New York Post: ‘He is the shooter. You see him with the backpack. He gets on to the elevator and takes it directly to the floor she’s on.’
He added that the video had been edited as the whole footage was too graphic.
‘We are seeking him now,’ he went on. ‘There’s the gun that we believe, you see he pulls down the stop of the gun before he shoots the young lady.
‘He shoots her one time, it goes through her arm and into her body and causes her demise later on in the hospital.
Shemel’s 70-year-old grandmother Joan told the newspaper: ‘She died before she got to the hospital.
‘But before she died she gave the cops her boyfriend’s name. She told them he shot her.’
Joan told The Post: ‘They’re looking for him. Her boyfriend. Nobody knew that she had this boyfriend.
‘I always told her, “Shemel, you’re a beautiful girl, don’t worry about boys. Focus on your education.”‘
Shemel was originally from Guyana and was declared dead at a Brooklyn hospital.
The girl’s father Dexter Mercurius, 38, told the newspaper: ‘Before she passed she called out a boy’s name.
‘I don’t know if it was the boyfriend or not. I just have questions right now and no answers.’
Speaking to WABC, the father said Shemel had an order of protection against an ex-boyfriend — who isn’t the person whose name that Shemel gave.
A man and a woman went into Shemel’s apartment ahead of the incident Tuesday night and later took off, the TV station reported.
Shemel’s cousin Josiah was not hurt. His mother, who is Shemel’s aunt Latoya Price, told WABC: ‘I feel it, like I literally gave birth to her.
‘We were really that close. I’m the mother figure in her life, and I don’t know what to think because I don’t know how it happened.’
Price told CBS New York: ‘I said, “What happened?” He said “Shemel died.”
‘I said, “How?” He said the man took the gun and went “boom.”‘
