Two Venezuelan sisters said their family is trying to pick up the pieces of their American dream after their mother was shot and killed on Randall’s Island early on Monday.
“We decided to come here for a better future, like everyone does,” Oriana Martinez, 24, told Gothamist in Spanish on Wednesday. “Unfortunately, my mom was in the wrong place with the wrong people.”
Her mother Sandra Martinez, 44, was struck by two bullets around 3:30 a.m. on Monday as she and others celebrated the Venezuelan election’s initial results at a parking lot under the Robert F. Kennedy Bridge, police officials said. She was pronounced dead at Harlem Hospital. A 32-year-old and a 31-year-old were also injured in the incident, according to the NYPD.
“We were excited about the election,” said Oriana Martinez. “We thought the [Maduro] regime 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.”
Oriana and her sister Jairobis Martinez, 22, held back tears while recounting the scene that unfolded as dozens of people listened to music and shared drinks in the parking lot on Monday. It’s located about half a mile from the city’s massive migrant tent shelter on Randall’s Island, where Sandra Martinez had been living with her husband and two daughters.
“We were waiting for the results,” Oriana Martinez said. “My mom was drinking, dancing. And then a suspect came and started shooting.”
Jairobis Martinez said she was at the party and saw the shooter arrive on a moped and begin firing toward the crowd from afar.
“My mom was innocently gunned down,” she said. “After that, everyone ran away, and it was just us left there without help from anyone else.”
Carlos Nieves, the NYPD’s assistant deputy commissioner of public information, said on Wednesday that police had identified a person of interest in the case whom they were not ready to announce. He added that the shooter fired at the crowd from about 75 feet away.
Police are requesting the public’s help in identifying the suspect. The NYPD previously said he was a victim of an unreported gunpoint robbery and was acting in retaliation when he shot up the group on Randall’s Island.
About a week earlier, three men were shot and killed near a migrant shelter in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn. Police arrested Jorge Said Benitez Villa, 26, several days later in connection with the case and charged him with two counts of murder. He was in the hospital and had not been arraigned as of last Friday, according to Brooklyn prosecutors.
Police have not released any information indicating that the shootings on Randall’s Island and in Clinton Hill were related.
The Martinez sisters said the shooting that killed their mother has exacerbated shelter residents’ fears about a lack of safety. They also expressed disappointment that they’ve heard little from detectives so far.
“Randall’s is really unsafe, you can’t leave your things alone because people steal, you can’t make friends with anyone because you don’t know who they really are,” Oriana Martinez said. “Now people are scared because my mom was just a regular person and she just happened to be there and she died.”
She recounted the arduous journey that brought the family to New York City. After leaving Caracas due to political and economic strife, they spent six years in Chile before embarking on a three-month trek to the United States. Their 15-year-old brother had to stay behind with their grandmother, she said.
The Martinez sisters said that the family decided to head to New York after seeing how resources in Texas had been stretched thin amid the influx of migrants from the southern U.S. border. They arrived in April and spent a few months bouncing around locations before ending up at the 3,000-person tent shelter on Randall’s Island.
Sandra Martinez wasn’t working in the city, but she had been trying to find a way to sell home-cooked meals to make ends meet, as she had done when the family lived in Venezuela and Chile, her daughters said.
“She loved being in the kitchen,” said Oriana Martinez. “She made everything, main courses, desserts. She just loved cooking.”
As police continued to investigate the case, the sisters said their family was seeking to save up enough money to have their mother cremated. They said they were also working to bring their teenage brother to join them in New York.
“That was my mom’s dream, so no matter what, we’re going to make it happen,” Oriana Martinez said.
“My mom was just a victim who was in the wrong place, and because of that, my mom deserves justice,” she added.
This story has been updated with additional information from the NYPD.