The devastated mother of an 11-year-old girl killed by a stray bullet outside a Bronx nail salon begged her killers for an explanation in court Wednesday, as one of the teen thugs received a 10-year sentence.
Yanisha Gomez said in an emotional statement before the Bronx Supreme Court that the pain of losing little Kyhara Tay in the senseless 2022 shooting is still fresh three years later.
“This nightmare, I do not wish upon anyone,” Gomez yelled at the baby-faced killers. “A mother should never go through this pain. An innocent child should never be taken away from its mother in this way. I would like to ask you, “Do you feel any remorse, regret, shame, or guilt?”
“Because your intentions was to take another young teen and you all ended up taking a soul who appreciated life and loved God,” she exclaimed. “You all denied her the opportunity to graduate, fall in love, and live life. “You took away all of her dreams.”
Matthew Godwin, who was sentenced to ten years in prison as part of a plea deal Wednesday, was 15 years old when he and then-18-year-old Omar Bojang rode up on a moped on May 16, 2022, shooting at a 13-year-old boy but hitting Kyhara instead, according to prosecutors.
She was rushed to Lincoln Hospital and pronounced dead.
The gun-toting teens, who were caught on security camera footage, were arrested and charged with second-degree murder on June 3, 2022, and have since been held in prison.
“I am so sorry for what I have done and the pain I have caused you,” Godwin told Gomez in court on Wednesday. “I am also very disappointed in myself and the pain I have caused you. I accept full responsibility for my actions.
“As I got older, I realized I took the life of an 11-year-old innocent young girl,” according to him. “At night, I cry myself to sleep, knowing what I have done. “I do not go a day without feeling regret and remorse.”
They both pleaded guilty last month in exchange for agreed-upon sentences, with Godwin receiving ten years and Bojang expected to receive fifteen years on May 14 after meeting with probation officials.
The older gunman addressed the girl’s mother in court.
“I just want to pay my dues to society and you know, just show everyone that I am not the monster everybody created or put me up to be,” Bojang told me. “I would not wish this pain on anyone. I am also sorry to my mother, father, and family for letting you down. “They raised me to be better than that.”
Darcel Clark, the Bronx District Attorney, described the deadly shooting as “a catastrophe for our young people.”
Kyhara was a student at MS 424 (Bronx Academy for Multi-Media).
The bubbly girl’s family said she was named after Kiara, the cub in the Disney animated film “Lion King II,” with the addition of her mother’s initials, Y and H.
“Dad is telling me Kyhara is the daughter of lions because the family is so close that they are always together, like a pride,” police said following the shooting.
The girl’s tragic death occurred in the midst of a string of shootings in the five boroughs targeting teens and children, including the 17-year-old son of an NYPD officer, a 14-year-old boy wounded in the Bronx a week before Kyhara’s death, and a 3-year-old girl who was shot while leaving a Brownsville day care center with her father in broad daylight.
“I can not believe I am in this position,” Yanisha Gomez said in Bronx Supreme Court on Wednesday. “As a mother, I will never forget the day I lost my child. I will keep asking God for justice, whether here or in the afterlife.
“Our only hope is that justice will prevail.”