THE grieving relatives of a New York City mom who was shot dead in a cold-blooded assassination by a female shooter believe the suspect is a family friend who set up the brazen murder.
Delia Johnson, 42, was gunned down on a Brooklyn street on Tuesday night in a chilling premeditated hit that was caught on camera.
Her distraught mom Delia Barry told the New York Post on Friday her eldest daughter’s killer is well-known to the family and had stayed with them.
She said of the suspect: “I know her! Oh my God, she used to stay with us. She slept in my bed, ate my food.”
Hadijah Pendley, a little sister of the victim, called the suspect “a family friend who came to our family events, celebrations, holidays — whatever you want to call it, she came.”
The NYPD is yet to comment on a potential motive.
SICKENING ATTACK
Horror security footage emerged Thursday showing the moment the killer steps out of a white SUV and approaches Johnson as she chats to friends on a stoop in the Prospect Heights neighbourhood.
She then pulls a gun out from behind her back and shoots Johnson several times as terrified bystanders duck for cover.
The assassin then calmly walks back to the double-parked car and drives off.
LURED TO DEATH
It also emerged Friday that Johnson had been with another friend, Shawn Johnson, minutes before the attack — but she left after receiving a mystery call.
Shawn, 43, told the Post: “She was on the block with us, she got a phone call, and when she got the phone call, she said, ‘I’ll be right back’.”
“Twenty minutes later, somebody called me and told me she got shot,” he said of Delia. “I told him he was lying. I was just standing here with her.”
‘FOLLOWED FROM FUNERAL’
Johnson’s family also believe the killer may have followed her victim from a earlier funeral.
Her brother Mathis Johnson, 47, told the New York Daily News: “She was at a funeral earlier in the evening for an old neighborhood friend to pay her respects, and then this happened,” said the 47-year-old.
“It was horrible. That lady executed my sister.”
He also paid tribute to his “beautiful” and “amazing” sister, who was the mother of a 17-year-old daughter.
