A bleeding Brooklyn baby-sitter shared the first name of her cold-blooded killer with cops before taking her final breath, police sources said Wednesday.
A barely conscious Shemel Mercurius, lying on a toy car in her family’s Brooklyn apartment, died from a gunshot wound shortly after fingering her killer, the sources said.
Cops withheld the suspect’s name as a video surfaced showing a man armed with an assault rifle coercing his way inside the home where the 16-year-old was babysitting her nephew.
The manhunt for the fugitive suspect continued for a second day, with cops saying the rifle-toting man wore a black hoodie and red sweatpants with black stripes.
High school student Mercurius initially tried to keep the gun-toting man and a female companion from joining her and 3-year-old Josiah inside the apartment, the source said. But the man apparently talked his way inside.
The camera caught the couple fleeing the sixth-floor apartment after Mercurius was mortally wounded — and her tiny cousin howled in horror.
Cops described the dead girl’s boyfriend was “a person of interest” in the shooting. Mercurius was shot twice — once in each bicep — with one of the bullets punching through her arm and into her chest, police said.
The slain girl’s family, spread across two continents, was united Wednesday in mourning. Shemel’s dad told the Daily News that he called his wife in their native Guyana to deliver the heart-breaking news.
His oldest daughter was a “very nice person,” said dad Dexter Mercurius, 38. “Very nice, cool, person. No problem with anybody.”
The slain teen’s grandmother spent a sleepless night after learning of the violent death, but she remembered Shemel as a treasure.
“Always liked to dress up, look fancy,” said Joan Mercurius. “Always very pleasant. She was nice, friendly … she had a lot of school friends.”
The grandmom, who had eight children of her own, said she knew nothing about the mysterious boyfriend sought by the NYPD.
“I told her, ‘Shemel, you’re a nice girl, don’t worry about no boyfriend,'” said the family matriarch. “And she said, ‘I don’t have a boyfriend. I don’t want a boyfriend.'”
The teen was killed in the apartment of her aunt Latoya Price, who took Shemel in four years ago when the girl immigrated with her dad from Guyana. The family was hoping she would attend college in the U.S.
“She’s not my niece, she’s like my daughter,” said the distraught Price, 31, on the morning after the slaying. “I feel like I gave birth to her.”
Mercurius, a junior at Edward R. Murrow High School, died Tuesday night at Kings County Hospital after she was hit by two bullets.
A neighbor said he saw a man sprinting down the stairs after the gunshots echoed through the building.
Mercurius was baby-sitting her 3-year-old cousin Josiah, who watched the carnage from a few feet away. Neighbors heard the child’s screams over the gunshots.
“My son was in the room when she was shot,” said Price. “He said a man took a gun and there were gunshots popping. He knew she was hurt.”
Little Josiah, who escaped unharmed, lost his appetite after the horror show. “He doesn’t even eat now,” said his mom.
Mercurius’ dad broke down into sobs at a vigil outside the tragic teen’s home Wednesday night, as Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams railed against gun violence.
“We will never normalize violence, we will never reach the point where we become immune or we become callous when violence takes place,” Adams said. “We are here because we want the person responsible for this brought to justice.”
Said Brooklyn Councilwoman Laurie Cumbo, “This is a brutal blow to this family and as we can see, the family is distraught and riddled with pain and anguish that will never go away.”
Price, who had planned to take her niece to Trinidad this summer, was now afraid to even enter her own apartment.
“I don’t know if they cleaned up the blood yet inside,” said Price. “That was a home we were sharing. It just wouldn’t be the same.”
With Thomas Tracy, Andy Mai, Alexa Torrens
