By Jeff Mays and Nina Mandell
DNAinfo Reporters/Producers
HARLEM — Ann Pearson-Fludd has been trying to figure out why anyone would want to hurt her daughter ever since police delivered the tragic news this morning.
Keisha Fludd, 23, was shot in the head in front of 166 W. 132nd St., between Lenox Avenue and Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard, police said. Officers responding to a call of a person shot found her about 2:42 a.m.
"She's with God. She's with God now," Keisha Fludd's aunt, Esther Johnson, said as she hugged Ann Pearson-Fludd.
"Everybody knew she was beautiful. She was cheerful and always doing favors for everybody," said Pearson-Fludd, 58. "She was always bringing the young mothers to my door trying to help them."
Pearson-Fludd said her daughter worked at a retail store in the Bronx until she recently lost the job. Keisha Fludd had then applied for training to become a certified nursing assistant and was to turn in her health records this week, Pearson-Fludd said. Her daughter was also trying to get her driver's license.
"I wish they would find whoever did this. We want justice," said Fludd's aunt Esther Johnson. "They didn't have to kill her. She didn't do anything to deserve that."
An NYPD detective canvassed the area yesterday afternoon. A police source said no arrests had been made yet.
One woman who lives near the scene of the shooting said she awoke at 4 a.m. to find that police had taken over the block.
"I saw the body covered up with a sheet," said the woman who has lived on the block for 9 years and who asked not to be identified because she fears for her safety. "I've heard more gunfire recently and there seems to be an uptick in crime."
The woman said she normally feels comfortable taking the bus after dark but recently took a cab home after midnight because of the increase in gun fire.
Another man, who also asked not to be identified, said there was a brownstone a few doors down from the shooting scene that had a lot of drug activity.
A few minutes after he spoke to DNAinfo, police were called to a brownstone a few doors down from the murder scene when a woman began banging on the door with the base of a floor lamp and screaming threats. She was led away in handcuffs.
