Mom injured in Times Square shooting slams people for filming scenes after she was gunned down next to toddler daughter
A MOM gunned down next to her toddler daughter after a shooter opened fire in Times Square has slammed onlookers for filming the shocking scenes instead of helping.
Wendy Magrinat, 23, was shot in the leg while visiting the tourist hotspot with her husband Yoel, their two-year-old daughter Elise, and her mother, stepfather, and eight-year-old sister.
Police are hunting for Farrakhan Muhammad, 31, in connection with the incident which saw Wendy, a 43-year-old woman, and a four-year-old girl, wounded.
Instead of the crowds of people that flock to the commercial intersection each day rushing to her aid – bystanders whipped out their phones to record the horror.
Ignoring her agonizing cries of: “I don’t want to die, please help me!”, Wendy said: “People were just recording, they weren’t helping.
“I was on the floor and a group just surrounded me, all with their phones recording. I understand people get in shock.
“But if you’re in shock, you shouldn’t be recording. But that’s how people are right now.”
The family had traveled from Florida for a Mother’s Day celebration that soon turned sour after a row erupted between a group of men as Wendy waited in line to go into the Line Friends store on Broadway with her toddler daughter.
“I told him [her husband] hey baby, I think this is starting to heat up. Just go a little in front in case they start saying bad words.”
Moments later, she was struck by a stray bullet – which remains in her leg -after shots were fired as the suspect, who reportedly sells CDs for a living, allegedly aimed for his brother.
She explained: “Everything was so fast, but the shooting started — and the first shot went to my leg.”
Hundreds of terrified shoppers and tourists ran for their lives as the wounded Wendy tried to get her family to safety, “but couldn’t”.
“The pain was too much, and I dropped to the floor.”
“I felt really dizzy, and I was losing blood and I just started screaming, ‘I got shot! I got shot! I don’t want to die!'”
“All I kept thinking was, ‘I have a two-year-old child – it could have been her, or it was possible I’d never get to see her again.”
“I would have died if my daughter would have gotten shot,” she continued.
She said the only ones to help her were the “amazing” NYPD officers who rushed to the victims aid after shots were fired outside the Minskoff Theater, where the popular production of The Lion King is performed.
The cop who carried the injured four-year-old Skye Martinez to safety after she was shot has been hailed as a hero.
Officer Alyssa Vogel was filmed running through the mayhem while clutching little Skye – who she described as “so strong”.
“She didn’t even cry once except when we were putting the tourniquet on. She screamed because it’s very painful.
“I just picked her up so I could run to the ambulance. She was just saying she wanted her mom. Her mom was running right behind me, but she was calling for her mother,” Vogel recalled.
“I kept telling her [Skye’s mother] to breathe, that I know what she’s going through because I have a baby myself. It was very difficult for her, very traumatic. She saw her daughter just get shot.”
The young girl, from Brooklyn, is said to be recovering well and is in a stable condition in hospital.
The third victim, Marcela Aldana, 43, from New Jersey, was shot in the foot. All the victims are expected to recover from their injuries.
Authorities continue the search for Muhammad, who was reportedly arrested last year on suspicion of assault, after his brother gave his name to detectives.
Most read in News
Cops approached a man on West 31st Street in Manhattan who they believed resembled the suspect, to which the man replied, “I’m his brother,” the New York Post reported.
NYPD officers on the scene recovered three .25 caliber shell casings – and have released photos of Muhammad – who appears to have changed out of his dark clothes soon after the incident.
Officers with a canine unit were photographed by the Post getting clothes from a trash can matching the black jacket and black Adidas pants he had been wearing at the time of the shooting.
