A Manhattan mother was shot dead while walking to the supermarket with her son Monday — in what police believe was likely a stray-bullet tragedy, authorities and her distraught husband said.
Valeria Ortega, 64, was struck in the head at Dyckman Street and Vermilyea Avenue around 11:31 a.m. — just blocks from her Inwood home — and later pronounced dead at Harlem Hospital, according to police.
“Oh my God,” her husband, Vicente Garcia, said as he wept near the scene where his wife’s bloody scarf still lay . “My son, he said, ‘Look at my mother’ … My child told me, ‘Look at my mother.’”
Edgar Garcia, who works as a clerk at a GNC store on same corner, said he heard the shots and went outside to see the bleeding victim as she lay dying on the frigid sidewalk.
“She had already fallen to the ground,” Garcia said. “I just saw her lying there while blood was leading. … She was laying face-flat near her cart and I just saw the blood splattered.
Valeria Ortega, 64, was shot and killed while walking to the supermarket Monday. G.N.Miller/NYPost“I didn’t see exactly where she got shot from,” he said. “But other people were telling me they witnessed her getting shot in the head.”
The shocking burst of gun violence came just minutes after a 26-year-old man was shot and seriously wounded about a half-mile away.
The husband of the victim, Vicente Garcia, in tears near the crime scene where his wife Valeria Ortega was shot to death. Peter GerberThe victim, who wasn’t publicly identified, was shot inside his apartment at 425 W. 205th St. around 11:46 a.m. and was still clinging to life at Harlem Hospital on Monday evening, according to police.
“They do not appear to be connected at this time,” NYPD Lt. John Grimpel said of the two incidents.
Another department spokesman said cops have not determined the motive for either shooting, as the dual investigations continued.
Police said two people were shot, one of them fatally, within minutes and a half-mile in Harlem on Monday. G.N.Miller/NYPostLuis Senfleur, a nearby sidewalk vendor, said he heard the gunfire that killed Ortega and saw her “falling.”
“I thought it wasn’t real, the shot,” Senfleur said. “But when I saw her fall, I said … ‘They’re real.’ I was the one that was supposed to call immediately but I get nervous. You know, I’ve never been in this situation.
“It’s getting worse,” he said of violence in the neighborhood. “Over here especially.”
Valeria Ortega 64, was walking to the supermarket when she was shot and killed, police said. G.N.Miller/NYPostPolice said it’s likely that Ortega was an innocent bystander hit by a stray shot.
No arrests have been made in either shooting. A man wearing gray sweats was spotted fleeing the scene of the second shooting, cops said.
