The NYPD is offering $3,500 for information on a Randall’s Island shooting that left a migrant mom dead – as her grieving family lamented she was “in the wrong place with the wrong people.”
Sandra Serrano, 44, was struck in the face and back by a moped-riding shooter who also shot two others early Monday in Lot 71 – about a quarter mile from the Randall’s Island migrant shelter, authorities said.
The slain Venezuelan migrant woman, identified by her family as Sandra Martinez, had been living with her husband and two daughters in the shelter, according to Gothamist.
“We decided to come here for a better future, like everyone does,” Serrano’s daughter, Oriana Martinez, 24, told the outlet in Spanish on Wednesday. “Unfortunately, my mom was in the wrong place with the wrong people.”
Two other people were shot — a 32-year-old man and a 31-year-old woman — and hospitalized in stable condition, cops said.
Now, the NYPD is asking anyone with information on the deadly gun violence to come forward in exchange for up to $3,500, provided by CrimeStoppers.
The victims were part of a crowd of about 50 people celebrating around 3:30 a.m. as the results of the Venezuelan presidential election rolled in, NYPD Chief of Patrol John Chell said at a briefing Monday.
“We were excited about the election,” Oriana Martinez told Gothamist. “We thought the [Nicolás Maduro] regime would be gone, and our plan was to work here, earn money, send it back home and fix up a little house so we could return.”
But instead, the family was thrown into tragedy.
“We were waiting for the results,” Oriana said. “My mom was drinking, dancing. And then a suspect came and started shooting.”
The victim’s other daughter, Jairobis Martinez, told Gothamist she saw the shooter roll up to the festivities on a moped and open fire toward the revelers from a distance.
“My mom was innocently gunned down,” Jairobis said. “After that, everyone ran away, and it was just us left there without help from anyone else.”
Chell said on Monday that the shooting was apparently done as an act of payback for an earlier robbery.
“Right now the motive that we are going with, the person who did the shooting was a victim of an unreported gunpoint robbery,” Chell said. “That happened earlier in the evening. I don’t know the exact time.”
The slain woman’s daughter lamented the unsafe conditions at the tent city, erected to accommodate the thousands of migrants flocking into the Big Apple from the US border with Mexico.
“Randall’s is really unsafe, you can’t leave your things alone because people steal, you can’t make friends with anyone because you don’t know who they really are,” Oriana said. “Now people are scared because my mom was just a regular person and she just happened to be there and she died.”
The site has been the subject of controversy in the past, including outbursts of violence.
Last month, a brawl broke out between feuding migrant groups at the site, leading to several arrests.
In April, five men were charged with assault for their part in a rowdy fight that left one asylum seeker suffering a stab wound and four intervening security guards injured.
In January, a migrant housed at the facility was stabbed to death in a dispute over a woman, leading to three arrests, police said.
Anyone with information on the Monday bloodshed is asked to call the 25th Precinct Detective Squad at 212-860-6536 or the NYPD’s Crime Stoppers Hotline at 1-800-577-TIPS (8477) or for Spanish, 1-888-57-PISTA (74782).
The public can also submit their tips by logging onto the Crime Stoppers website at https://crimestoppers.nypdonline.org/, or on X @NYPDTips.
