Yesterday morning, tragedy struck at a Coney Island apartment complex where a 41-year-old man was shot to death. Shamael Miller was found with multiple gunshot wounds on Neptune Ave. at W. 33rd St. around 7:15 a.m. The discovery was made by a building worker who initially mistook the victim for someone asleep in the lobby. "And he thought the guy was sleeping, so he tried to shake him up and to wake him up, and he didn’t," recounted a colleague of the building worker in a statement obtained by NY Daily News. After realizing the man was unresponsive, building employees called 911, and Miller was rushed to NYU Langone Hospital-Brooklyn where he was pronounced dead.
Miller, a resident of the Briarwood section of Queens, was not known to have any connections with the apartment building where the shooting occurred. A motive for the crime had not yet to clearly emerge, and by Sunday evening, police had made no arrests. As community members grapple with the news, a sense of unease simmers among those who frequent the area. "These things have been happening for years, and it’s a shame that it’s still happening but that’s life, that’s New York life," Frantz, who works nearby, told News 12. The sentiment highlights a weary familiarity with violence in the neighborhood, despite the shock of such close proximity to death.
The impact of the shooting extends to those employed at the apartment complex. The ramifications of such violence create an undercurrent of fear amongst the workforce. An employee, requesting anonymity, shared his concerns with NY Daily News: "[This] kind of makes me a little nervous now, because I work here," he said. He contemplated the role timing might have played, had he arrived earlier for his shift on the day of the shooting, posing the question, "Would I have been involved because I was here?" A chilling reminder of the arbitrary nature of such violent incidents.
The NYPD is still investigating the situation. No additional information has been provided about potential suspects or leads.
