By Phil Corso and Christina Santucci
Police were still on high alert Monday with a suspect at large in South Jamaica where the NYPD said a 14-year-old girl was shot in the head while sitting on a city bus over the weekend.
D’aja Robinson was aboard an idling Q6 bus Saturday night near the intersection of Rockaway and Sutphin boulevards when a gunman pumped several rounds into the vehicle from the outside – one of which struck the girl in the head, police said. The suspect then fled into nearby Baisley Pond Park, the NYPD said.
No arrests have been made and the investigation was ongoing, cops said.
The NYPD said Robinson had just left a friend’s Sweet 16 party nearby and was waiting for the Q6 bus to depart from its Sutphin Boulevard stop. The bus runs between Jamaica and John F. Kennedy International Airport.
Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said Robinson was not likely the intended target in the shooting. He described the suspect as a man wearing a black sweater and between the ages of 18 and 25. Police said there was no description of the suspect’s race.
Family members and friends of the teen’s South Jamaica home about three quarters of a mile from where she was killed said the girl’s mother was extremely distraught.
“We just lost our baby,” one man said Sunday afternoon.
Police remained at the active crime scene through Monday morning as the hunt for the suspect continued. At the shooting site, hundreds of messages, candles, flowers, balloons and a stuffed dog had been placed in memory of the 14-year-old.
One of the messages read, “D’aja, Mommy loves you 4ever” with the girl’s birth date and date of her death written underneath.
Chris Jones, 20, said his little sister was the same age as D’aja and he knew her from the neighborhood. He remembered D’aja as a girl with a stand-out personality who loved R&B music, including artists like Chris Brown.
“I just put a candle,” Jones said. “I just think something has to change over here. Every day there is a new shooting.”
Another neighbor who can relate to the family’s grief also stopped by to offer her condolences. A relative of Kevin Miller, a 13-year-old Jamaica boy who was killed in 2009 after being caught in gang-related crossfire, visited D’aja’s family Sunday afternoon, she said.
“There is really nothing you can say at a time like this,” the relative said.
Kevin, who went to the same school as D’aja at Campus Magnet High School in Cambria Heights, was walking home after going for a snack at McDonald’s when two nearby Queens Crips members initiated a gang shootout with rival Bloods gang members, the Queens district attorney said. Gang members Gregory Calas, 21, and 19-year-old Nnonso Ekwegbalu were sentenced to 50 years in prison in February.
Reach reporter Phil Corso by e-mail at pcorso@cnglocal.com or by phone at 718-260-4573.
