A 17-year-old girl was shot and killed in a vacant sixth-floor apartment of a sprawling Brooklyn complex late Monday, the result of what cops are investigating as a possible accident, law enforcement sources and police officials say.
The NYPD identified Raelynn Cameron, of Queens, as the victim in the sixth floor East New York apartment building shooting on Eldert Lane. Officers responding to a 911 call just before 11 p.m. found Cameron in the lobby, shot in the chest.
She was taken to a hospital, where she was pronounced dead — two weeks shy of her 18th birthday.
It wasn't clear what Cameron, a freshman at Medgar Evers College, was doing in the building at the time. Law enforcement sources say cops took several people who had been with her into custody and that they're looking into whether the gun was fired accidentally.
Police said Cameron was in a vacant apartment, inside of which detectives found one shell casing and a trail of blood. Detectives also said there is surveillance showing two men leaving her downstairs before 11 p.m.
But Cameron's family said later in the day that the narrative from police and witnesses isn't adding up.
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"This is not an accident and they are brushing it off like she is invalid because she’s Black. And where she was at, she went there to help that girl," said mom Cassandra Adams. "She had potential. She was going somewhere, she was going to be someone."
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Cameron’s mom and brother are specifically taking issue with the timeline. They both say they got texts from her for help after people from the building called 911. They also said they don't know who she was with.
"I just want the truth. I just want justice. I just want to be able to tell the story of how her life began and ended," said her brother, Ralik Smith.
A church volunteer, Cameron had been staying with her older brother in Bed-Stuy for the past few months.
"She was my world. She was loved. I don’t know who else to say. But I want to speak her story because we lose too many good ones this way," said Adams. "I will never be the same."
No arrests have been made.
Anyone with information is asked to call Crime Stoppers at 1-800-577-TIPS.
