BY LINCOLN ANDERSON | An arrest has been made in the killing of Deontay Moore,18, who was fatally shot outside the Jacob Riis Houses last July.
Police reported on Saturday that Allah Dajon, 21, of 577 Roosevelt Drive, in the Baruch Houses, had been arrested and charged with second-degree murder.
On July 20, 2013, at around 10:47 p.m., police responded to a 911 call of a shooting outside 118 Avenue D, in the Riis Houses. Moore was found with a gunshot wound to the head. E.M.S. responded and transported the victim to Bellevue Hospital in critical condition, where he was pronounced dead at 10:45 the next morning.
According to the Daily News, two suspects on bicycles had fired several shots from a nearby courtyard, with one bullet hitting Moore in the back of the head.
The victim lived around the corner in another building in the Riis complex at 466 E. 10th St.
A man entering 118 Avenue D Sunday evening, with some chicken from the store across the street, only gave his name, Jake, and age, 18. He said he had been in front of the building hanging out right next to Moore and others when the shooting happened. A scaffolding has since been erected at the site.
“You see where that third rail is at?” he said, pointing to one of a scaffolding’s support poles. “That’s where he was shot.
“We didn’t get to see him,” he said of the gunman. “We just heard shots.”
He said everyone “panicked,” and he himself immediately darted for the building’s door.
“When he went down,” he said of Moore, “he went fully down. I didn’t stand there watching. I heard, ‘No! D! … He got shot!’
“It took a while for the ambulance to come,” he said, adding that police could have arrived sooner, too, considering the precinct is just a block away.
“I heard a brawl happened before he got shot,” he added.
It had been a warm night, and people were sitting on the benches out front and along the fence leading to the building’s doorway, he recalled.
“We were all hanging out, listening to music,” he said. “It was summertime. I was coming from the chicken store, like I am now, so, I decided to hang out.”
Asked how long he had known Moore, he said, “I know D since middle school. … We all know each other around here,” he said, as a couple of young men entered the building, giving him fist bumps on their way in.
According to DNA info, Moore, who had dropped out of Murry Bergtraum High School in 10th grade, was studying to get his G.E.D.
Last Sunday night, Franklin Pagan was coming out of 118 Avenue D after having just paid a visit to his mother, 82. He grew up on E. 14th St. but now lives nearby in Waterside Plaza and works as a bouncer in Jamaica, Queens.
Asked if he felt the area was safe, he said, yes, but “it depends what you run into.”
When it’s freezing cold, like it was Sunday night, it’s not dangerous, he said. But when it gets warm, that’s when trouble and violence can break out.
“When it’s warm out, you won’t find me around here,” he said. “I’ll be far away — I’ll be in Coney Island.”
