A hooligan whose reckless firefight reportedly led to the tragic death of the beloved Harlem Community Pillar Excenia Mette was on bail in a slanting case when the meaningless shooting unfolded, learned the mail.
Darious Smith, 23, pulled a white Tyvek suit over his face while on Thursday he was pushed into a wheelchair in a courthouse in Manhattan to make accusations of attempted murder and criminal possession of a firearm for the death of Mette.
Sources said that Smith is supposed to have exchanged shots with the still large shooter whose lost bullet mete in the head while she hurried out selfless to check her grandson on Tuesday evening.
Smith was shot in the foot during the scuffle.
Judge Kacie Lally, judge Kacie Lally, ordered Smith prisoned without a bail – a result that he availed the last time he was accused of a violent crime.
“This is what makes our work more difficult,” said Mayor Eric Adams on Thursday during an event about taking illegal weapons from the street.
“If you constantly allow those who have recidivism to keep violence in our city to keep walking through the streets,” he said.
“The criminal justice system includes the police, judiciary and legislators. They must all be involved in the same path.”
Records show that Smith was arrested in June 2024 after he reportedly cut two people with a box cutter on Lenox Avenue near West 118th Street while trying to steal e-bike batteries.
When he was presented for theft and attack costs, prosecutors asked in the district procurer of Manhattan Alvin Bragg for bail at $ 50,000 cash or $ 150,000 bond, records.
But judge Michael Ryan set it up at $ 10,000, which Smith placed – allowing him to run free for his planned May test, says sources.
Smith lived on just one block away from the former company of Mette, the food from Mama Zee to Plez Deli, the first black female bodega in the city when she opened it in the 1980s.
Loved ones and neighbors gathered on Thursday in an improvised sanctuary for the house of Mette in West 113th Street and Lenox Avenue, where she was shot.
They hung a photo of Mette, which they knew lovingly as “Momma Sea” or “Zeenie”, who play on a beach.
Neighbor Barbara Johnson, 66, said she was not surprised that one of the shooters is a repeated perpetrator.
“They have to do something for the youth, to keep them busy, to do something to give them, something to look forward to,” she said.
“Idle Hands is the devil’s workshop.”
“No system devised to keep people low, will do everything to help us, and that is from the start, the first day of this country.”
Adams, who spoke with PIX11 on Wednesday evening, blamed the criminal justice system instead because he had made Smith on the street.
“Public security is a criminal justice that includes the police, including judges, including legislators. The police are doing their work,” he said.
“If you have a person with repeated violence, just last year, he was arrested for theft and put two people. Now he is back on the street, involved in a shooting that has received the life of an innocent woman. We must have the other parts of the criminal justice system to do their work.”
City councilor Yusef Salaam (D-Manhattan)-who represents the Harlem neighborhood and is chairman of the Public Safety Committee of the Council GAF a sincere memory of Mette and the violence partially blamed systemic failures.
“Harlem mourns in mourning for Mette, who fed the community, stood next to the youth and gave back service with leaders such as the Reverend Sharpton and the artist Jim Jones,” Salaam said.
“This act of violence – the result of reckless and deadly conflict on our streets – is another painful memory that we are in the middle of a crisis for public safety,” he said.
“It is a crisis rooted, not only in crime, but in a long history of disinvestment, lack of opportunities and the systemic failures that our neighborhoods continue to bully.”
Other legislators representing the area aimed at gun prevention efforts, such as assembler Jordan Wright (D-Manhattan), who called it a reminder “how necessary it is to get weapons from our streets.”
“We have to continue to fight together to find solutions,” said Senator Cordelle Creare (D-Manhattan) in a statement.
“This is not the moment that the means are cut.”
Video images showed a man who matches Smith’s description, a scooter in the direction of a group of people, pull a gun and shoots two shots, state of the court papers.
The police believe that the second suspect subsequently grabbed his own gun and turned off the shots that Smith injured and killed Mette, said the sources of law enforcement.
Smith is said to have driven the scooter past West 113th Street before collided with a NYPD agent trying to stop him, the court documents.
He ran away to St. Nicholas Avenue, where he threw a 9 millimeter gun at the sidewalk, the papers is.
Sources said eight bullets were found in the Fatal Schietscène.
Smith’s controversial criminal lawyer Dawn Florio claimed in court that four police struck him with a weapons and a taser, next to his shot wound.
She asked for medical attention to Smith and grabbed that he was connected to the shooting, causes problems for his loved ones.
“My client’s family who lives in the neighborhood is threatened,” she said.
– Additional reporting by Vaughn Golden and Hannah Fierick
