PARKCHESTER — Family gathered outside of a brick cooperative housing complex to mourn the death of a 23-year-old man, the second to be shot in less than three months' time at an apartment at the Parkchester Houses.
On Friday afternoon, the victim was found shot in the head just before 3 p.m., in an apartment at 1553 Unionport Rd., police said. He was declared dead on arrival at Soundview Hospital, police said.
Genvieve Joseph said her son, Hughes Stevensen, was the young man killed, and spoke through tears outside the building.
"I don't know what happened. I'm still waiting for cops to answer me," said Joseph on the stoop of the building, joined by two other women. Joseph said her son, who knew two brothers that lived in the first-floor unit, had been dropping by the building to visit her on the sixth floor when the shooting occurred.
"He's a good child and he visits me daily," she said, even though Stevensen lived in another neighborhood. "I'm just so brokenhearted," she said.
Police confirmed that the fatal shooting occurred at the same home as an earlier shooting on June 22, left a 22-year-old man dead, and sent a 23-year-old to the hospital with bullet injuries in his leg. The shootout happened during an attempted robbery of a drug house, cops said at the time.
Joseph said her son was not in his friends' apartment when the June 22 incident took place.
"I didn't expect this. He got caught in the wrong kind of people," she added.
While the NYPD could not say whether the shooting in June was linked to the August 31 attack, neighbors said the apartment was troubled, and had been the source of ongoing problems.
"There's too much going on with that apartment," said an upstairs neighbor, who did not want his name used.
