The devastated mother of an 11-year-old girl killed by a stray bullet outside a Bronx nail salon begged her killers for answers in court Wednesday — as one of the teen thugs was hit with a 10-year sentence.
Yanisha Gomez said in an emotional statement in Bronx Supreme Court that the pain of losing little Kyhara Tay in the senseless 2022 shooting remains fresh three years later.
“This nightmare I do not wish upon anyone,” Gomez snapped at the baby-faced killers. “A mother should never feel this pain. An innocent child should never be taken away from a mother like this. I want to ask y’all, ‘Do you feel any remorse, regret, shame, guilt?”
“Because your intentions was to take another young teen and y’all ended up taking a soul who appreciated life and loved God,” she said. “Y’all denied her the opportunity to graduate, to be in love and to live life. Y’all took away all of her dreams.”
Matthew Godwin, who was sentenced to 10 years in prison as part of a plead deal Wednesday, was just 15 when he and then-18-year-old Omar Bojang rode up on a moped gunning for a 13-year-old boy on May 16, 2022 — but hit Kyhara instead, prosecutors said.
She was rushed to Lincoln Hospital, where she was pronounced dead.
The gun-toting teens, who were caught on security camera footage, were later arrested and arraigned on second-degree murder charges on June 3, 2022, and have since been held behind bars.
“I am so sorry for what I have done and the pain I’ve caused you,” Godwin told Gomez in court Wednesday. “I’m also very disappointed in myself and the pain I have caused you. I take full responsibility for my action.”
“As I got older, I realized I took the life of an 11-year-old innocent young girl,” he said. “At nights, I cry myself to sleep, knowing what I’ve done. Not a day goes by when I do not feel regret and remorse.”
They both pleaded guilty last month in exchange for agreed-to sentences, with Godwin getting 10 years and Bojang expected to be sentenced to 15 years on May 14 after meeting with probation officials.
The older gunman also addressed the girl’s mom in court/
“I just want to pay my dues to society and you know, just show everyone that I’m not the monster everybody created or put me up to be,” Bojang said. “I wouldn’t want this pain on anybody. I’m also sorry to my mom and my dad and my family for letting you down. They raised me to be better than that.”
Bronx DA Darcel Clark called the deadly shooting “a catastrophe for our young people.”
Kyhara was a student at MS 424, the Bronx Academy for Multi-Media.
The bubbly girl’s family said she was named after Kiara, the cub in the Disney animated flick “Lion King II,” with the Y and H, which are her mom’s initials, added to the name.
“Dad is telling me Kyahara is the daughter of lions because the family is so close that they’re always together, like a pride,” police told reporters after the shooting.
The girl’s tragic death came in the midst of a string of shootings in the five boroughs targeting teens and youngsters, including the 17-year-old son of an NYPD cop, a 14-year-old boy wounded in the Bronx a week before Kyhara’s death, and a 3-year-old girl who was wounded while leaving a Brownsville day care center with her dad in broad daylight.
“I can’t believe that I find myself in this position,” Yanisha Gomez said in Bronx Supreme Court on Wednesday. “As a mother I’ll say I will never forget the day that I lost my child. I’ll keep asking God for justice, either from here or from the afterlife.
“Our only hope is that justice will prevail.”
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