A New York man was sentenced to 41 years in prison after being convicted of fatally shooting a 16-year-old babysitter with a submachine gun.
Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Deborah Dowling said she saw no reason to show Taariq Stephens mercy when he failed to show mercy to 16-year-old Shemel Mercurius when he fatally shot her in 2016.
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“All the evidence indicated that it is you,” Dowling said to Stephens, according to the New York Post. “When you take a life, what do you give in exchange for life? There is nothing to give in return for a life.”
“I am not showing any mercy,” the judge said, adding that Stephens had shown none when he pushed his way into the East Flatbush apartment where Mercurius was babysitting her 3-year-old cousin Josiah and fired a single shot through her arm and into her abdomen.
Mercurius’ aunt and Josiah’s mother, LaToya Mercurius-Price, said Stephens, 26, had crippled their entire family with the May 2016 shooting.
“The echoes of ‘Mommy, mommy, Shemel has been shot and Josiah is covered in blood’ pierced me with the anguish, pain, hurt, panic, confusion, grief and left me emotionally paralyzed and hyperventilating,” she told the court. “The loss of our precious gem is beyond words.”
The motive for the shooting is not clear, although Mercurius reportedly told police waiting with her for an ambulance after she was shot that Stephens wanted to date her and she declined. She later died at a local hospital.
“This defendant will now spend many years behind bars for the callous killing of an innocent teenage girl who was taken from her loved ones far too early, and for undoubtedly traumatizing the toddler she was babysitting,” Brooklyn DA Eric Gonzalez said in a statement. “Nothing can bring Shemel back to her devastated family.”
Stephens was charged with second-degree murder and criminal possession of a weapon.
When Stephens was arrested, police released surveillance video of the suspect, in which Stephens could be seen racking his gun three times before opening fire in the girl’s home.
“He is the shooter. You see him with the backpack. He gets onto the elevator and takes it directly to the floor she’s on,” NYPD Chief of Detectives Robert Boyce said at a 2016 press conference.
In the video, the gunman is seen racking a .40-caliber Kel-Tec automatic weapon in the hallway just before he stormed Mercurius-Price’s sixth-floor apartment, when the teenager lived.
There’s the gun that we believe, you see he pulls down the stop of the gun before he shoots the young lady,” said Boyce. “He shoots her one time, it goes through her arm and into her body and causes her demise later on in the hospital.”
Boyce said there’s no indication that Stephens was the boyfriend of the doomed girl.
“What we can read of the texting, it was not a romantic relationship, so there’s a lot more to go on this case to figure out,” he said. “We think he’s a dangerous guy especially with that weapon and we’re concerned about it.”
