The NYPD is offering $3,500 to anyone with information about the shooting on Randall’s Island that killed a woman and injured two other people early Monday.
Police said a man opened fire into a crowd that was gathering after the initial results of the Venezuelan presidential election at around 3:30 a.m., striking three people. He then fled on a moped, according to the NYPD.
Officers found a woman who was shot in the face and back, whom the NYPD identified as Sandra Serrano, 44. She was pronounced dead at Harlem Hospital. A 31-year-old man and a 32-year-old woman were also injured, police said.
Family members told Gothamist Wednesday that the deceased woman, whom they identified as Sandra Martinez, was part of a crowd of people who were excited because they thought they thought the regime of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro “would be gone, and our plan was to work here, earn money, send it back home and fix up a little house so we could return.”
Police said they did not know why the deceased woman’s family members described her by a different name.
“We were waiting for the results,” her daughter Oriana Martinez said Wednesday. “My mom was drinking, dancing. And then a suspect came and started shooting.”
She said her mother had been in the “wrong place with the wrong people.”
On Wednesday, NYPD Assistant Deputy Commissioner of Public Information Carlos Nieves said police had identified a person of interest in the case, but officials were not yet ready to release information on that individual.
Authorities previously said they believe the shooter was the victim of an unreported gunpoint robbery and was acting in retaliation.
The NYPD asked that with information about the incident call the 25 Precinct Detective Squad at 212-860-6536 or the NYPD’s Crime Stoppers Hotline at 1-800-577-TIPS (8477) or for Spanish, 1-888-57-PISTA (74782).