The 16-year-old girl who was shot Friday after being caught in the crossfire in a shooting near her South Bronx high school was a straight student and a ‘beautiful soul,’ her grieving aunts told the Post. .
Angellyh Yambo became the latest victim of New York’s spiraling gun crisis when two ‘brazen criminals’ opened fire in a block of University Prep Charter High School around 1.45pm, hitting her as well as two other teenagers, according to the police and his relatives.
“She was a girl who went to school and came straight home. She was never on the streets,” Aunt Margarita Yambo said of her late niece. “She was one of the girls cutest you’ve ever met.”
The teenager’s parents are “devastated”, said Yambo, 38, whose brother is Angellyh’s father.
Another aunt, Elvia Henriquez, 36, described the slain girl as “loving, caring”.
Henriquez said his sister, Angellyh’s mother, “didn’t say much” as she is “still in shock”.
“She’s in really big disbelief right now,” Henriquez said.
Police had not officially released the girl’s name Friday evening, but the two aunts have confirmed the loss of their beloved niece, whom NYPD Commissioner Keechant Sewell described earlier Friday as “a young woman with a bright future.
NYPD Chief Timothy McCormack of Bronx detectives says the violence started when a man started ‘waving at someone’ across the street, pulled out a gun and began shooting as schoolchildren walked nearby after class.
The other two unintended targets – a girl and a boy, both also 16 – were expected to survive.
It was just the latest in a string of shootings that have killed or injured children across the city this year.
“I’m scared every day to go out because of this gun violence,” said Margarita Yambo.
“Put more cops on the street, on every corner. I do not know. I don’t know,” she continued, her voice cracking. “It’s not something that should have happened.
“I hope they find these animals,” she added of the shooter. “Surrender or hopefully the cops get them and they spend their whole lives in jail.”
Yambo told the Post that her niece was a “good girl,” who stayed out of trouble and focused on her schoolwork.
“She was a beautiful soul. She was a straight college student,” the grieving Bronx woman said in a phone interview.
“She had her whole life ahead of her.
The slain teenager had three brothers and was “a great big sister”, Yambo said, adding that her niece “loves to wear makeup” and excels at it.
Henriquez, the victim’s mother’s sister, said Angellyh’s siblings were “really struggling” to cope with their sister’s senseless death.
“Be aware of what you are doing during an argument,” the distraught aunt said. “Think before you do anything. People, innocent people lose their lives in situations that are not worth it.
The supervisor of a building near the scene of the East 156th Street shooting said the mother of the slain girl arrived after first responders unsuccessfully tried to resuscitate her daughter, who was shot in the chest.
“The mother was screaming hysterically. The police were holding her down,” he told the Post. “I felt her pain in her cry. There is nothing louder than a mother’s cry.
Video showed officers performing chest compressions on the girl as she lay in a pool of blood on the sidewalk.
“She didn’t deserve to be put down the way she was . . . Heartbroken,” Angellyh’s childhood best friend Hazel Cheeseboro said. “Her mother was heartbroken. She tries to hang on, but she’s not feeling very well. I mean, she just lost her daughter, but she’s trying.
The 15-year-old shared fond memories of Angellyh as she spoke to the Post through tears in the East 156th building that the two teens called home.
“She always looked on the bright side, never the bad side of anything. It was her,” said Cheeseboro, who learned of the tragedy by seeing “RIP Angellyh” posts on Facebook.
“She was a fun person to be around. She didn’t like seeing anyone angry or sad at all. She always lifted people’s spirits. If you were down, she was the person to call.
Angellyh enjoyed playing video games like “Call of Duty” and “Fortnite” and played to music by Beyoncé and Rihanna, her pal said.
The teenager said her friend had just started preparing for ninth grade college. When the two last saw each other last Saturday, Angellyh was excited to make new friends at school and apply for summer jobs.
The other two injured teens attended Mott Haven Village Preparatory High School and University Heights High School, which are located on the same campus as the slain girl’s high school.
The suspect, believed to be in his twenties, jumped into a vehicle and fled.
Additional reporting by Jack Morphet
