The two men accused of shooting and killing a 7-month-old baby in Brooklyn earlier this month are set to go before a judge on Tuesday, prosecutors said — hours after the baby’s coffin was drawn in a white horse-and-buggy through the streets of Brooklyn as part of her funeral.
The Brooklyn district attorney’s office said defendants Amuri Greene, 21, and Matthew Rodriguez, 18, will both appear in court on murder and other charges connected to the fatal shooting. The men were on a moped near the intersection of Humboldt and Moore streets in East Williamsburg on the afternoon of April 1 when Greene allegedly fired a gun and hit Kaori Patterson-Moore in her stroller nearby, according to police. Prosecutors have said she was not the intended target.
Police said Rodriguez and Greene fled the scene and crashed the moped into an oncoming car a few blocks away, leaving Greene with serious injuries. He was taken to the hospital and placed in custody after someone called 911 about the crash, officials said. Greene was arraigned from his hospital bed several days after the incident and pleaded not guilty to murder and weapons possession charges.
Rodriguez managed to flee to Pennsylvania, where he was arrested by NYPD detectives assigned to the U.S. Marshals Regional Fugitive Task Force after a massive manhunt, according to police. The NYPD said he is being charged with murder, attempted murder, criminal weapons possession, assault, hindering prosecution and tampering with a witness in Patterson-Moore’s death. Authorities said he was extradited to New York City on Monday after being indicted by a grand jury last week.
Attorney information for Rodriguez was not immediately available.
On Tuesday morning, Patterson-Moore’s small pink casket was loaded into a glass horse-drawn carriage for a funeral procession starting at the Lafayette Gardens public housing complex, where she lived. Her mother, father and 2-year-old brother climbed into a black hearse behind the carriage as friends and community members watched in tears.
“ I’m hurt, I’m scared for my own child. It’s so much,” said neighbor Cierra Harrell, who clutched her 5-year-old daughter Torrence as they watched the casket go by. “She’s been by my side all day, all night, like, ‘Mommy, you OK?’ Mommy’s OK. Mommy’s just worried about our future.”
Isaiah Greats, a friend of Patterson-Moore’s parents, said he hoped the procession would make people stop and think about the grim toll of the violence that took her life.
“That’s not a normal size casket to be in there. So it’s like you see that walk by, it’s automatically going to catch your attention,” he said. “It’s just going to hit harder.”
On Monday evening, dozens of relatives, friends and community leaders paid their respects to Patterson-Moore at a funeral home in Bed-Stuy as her body lay in a pink outfit in the open coffin at the front of the room. Pink balloons and posters of Minnie Mouse flanked the setup, and many of the mourners wore pink in her honor.
Rah Jennings, a close family friend, said the baby’s family has been struggling to process her loss. He said Patterson-Moore’s brother, who is 2 years old and was grazed in the shooting, “just keeps saying, ‘the baby is sleeping.’”
Tanya Moronta, a neighbor from the building where Patterson-Moore’s father lives, brought four pink plastic chairs she said she had decorated for the girl’s mother, grandmothers and great-grandmother.
“These are Kaori’s heaven chairs,” Moronta said, noting one of them featured a light that would shine to remind the infant’s family of her. “She’s a star. And she should be here standing with us right now.”
Brooklyn DA Eric Gonzalez, who is prosecuting the case, was spotted walking into the funeral home. Rev. Al Sharpton addressed the grieving family inside before coming out to speak briefly to reporters.
“If you can look at a coffin that doesn’t even need pallbearers and that doesn’t shake you in your heart and in your life, then something’s numb about you, and we cannot have a numb community,” Sharpton said. “We must turn this tragedy into a wake up call in our own community by really starting again, patrolling and talking to our young people.”
This story is based on preliminary information from law enforcement officials and has been updated with additional information.