A man and woman from Brooklyn went outside to walk their dog and talk about their kids — and stepped into a crossfire of bullets between two rival groups, one of the victims told the Daily News on Wednesday.
Margarita Rosado, 46, and the father of her children, Pedro DeJesus, 42, met up Tuesday night — as they often do to walk Mateo the family dog and talk about their three children, ages 26, 18 and 13 — outside the Marcy Houses when the night air exploded in gunfire.
“I was so scared, because the bullets were going right past my ears. It was horrible, it was an experience that I’ve never had before in my life,” Rosado, speaking in Spanish, said of the harrowing incident. “It’s something you can’t explain. More than anything, I thank god, because if not, I wouldn’t be here telling you this story.”
Rosado was struck in the toe and the leg, and DeJesus was hit in the hand. Police sources initially said, incorrectly, that the two were shot through a third-floor window and struck in an apartment on Marcy Ave.
“The danger is anywhere and everywhere these days. The danger is right outside your house, at your door, just around the corner,” Rosado said.
She said the couple “just walked around these two buildings like we always do.”
“When we got to the corner of Park Avenue and Marcy, we stayed there for like a minute, and we saw two people with dark skin walk by. One of them had a Citi Bike,” she recalled.
The duo were about 10 to 15 feet in front of Rosado and DeJesus, when two more men jumped out from behind a nearby traffic light and started shooting, she said.
“The only thing I saw was that one of the guys, the one with the bike, grabbed it and lifted it up,” she said. “And I saw that a first shot had gone off. So I got scared. I don’t know how, but I threw myself onto the ground.”
She added, “I didn’t see what happened with the others, with the father of my kids— I just stayed there, scared, because all of the bullets were flying over me. They kept shooting until those people ran away, in the opposite direction.”
More than six shots went off.
“I started screaming,” she said.
She said the bullet that hit her wasn’t the first one fired — she got down on the ground before she got hit.
“If I hadn’t thrown myself on the floor so quickly, something much worse would have happened to me, because I was closest to them.”
The shooters hit one of their intended targets, police sources said, though the man survived.
“They were there to kill them,” Rosado said.
“We didn’t see where they went, because I was on the floor,”she said. “The father of my children came running to put pressure on my leg, even with his hand hurt,” she said.
At some point, DeJesus ran inside to her apartment to call for help, splattering blood in the lobby and leading to her door.
“With his bloody hand he went running inside, and told my oldest son to call an ambulance,” she said.
The shooters remained at large Wednesday.
“It’s a senseless violence,” she said. “And the worst part is that they hit innocent people — people, like us, who live here in peace in our houses. I think this is really unfair, because the truth is that so many innocent people are dying.”
Rosado works as a cashier at a nearby Bravo Supermarket, and was taking classes in English and Microsoft Office before the pandemic hit.
Shortly after Rosado told her story, at about 3;15 p.m. Wednesday, shots rang out again near the Marcy Houses. No one was apparently hit, though bullets struck a vehicle on Park Ave, police said.
One neighbor, who wouldn’t give her name, speculated the shootings were part of an ongoing feud between young gang members at the Tompkins Houses and the Marcy Houses.
“Tompkins coming down to shoot up Marcy, and Marcy coming going up to shoot up Tompkins,” said the woman, who wouldn’t give her name. “Who is giving these kids these guns?”
