Harlem residents are mourning the tragic death of a local business owner and grandmother who was killed by a stray bullet. On Tuesday (April 22), a barrage of gunfire broke out along West 113th Street and Lenox Avenue. Excenia Mette, 61, heard the shots and rushed out of the building to check on her grandson to see if he was safe. According to New York Police Department officers, she was struck in the head by a bullet exchanged in the crossfire between two groups.
Mette was rushed to Mount Sinai Morningside Hospital, where she was pronounced dead. Mette’s death was met with grief by area residents, who called her Momma Zee. “She threw block parties, she did stuff for the kids,” her niece, Myisha Jordan, said to Gothamist in an interview on Wednesday (April 23). “She was a real good soul. She didn’t deserve to be laid out on the street.
Mette was a business owner, and according to a GoFundMe campaign she began during the COVID-19 pandemic, was the first Black woman to own a bodega in New York City since 1987. She was the owner of Momma Zee’s Food to Plez Deli, located on Adam Clayton Powell Boulevard and West 123rd Street, moving up from selling plates of food outside of her apartment building.
The NYPD arrested Darious Smith, a 23-year-old who was shot in the foot during the incident. NYPD Captain James Whitlock told the press that it was believed he was an intended target, and was found with a firearm in his possession. Detectives are searching for three other individuals involved in the incident, including the person who fired the shot that killed Mette.
“This is a horrific, horrific incident that took the life of a grandmother,” Mayor Eric Adams said when visiting the scene Wednesday, adding: “The case in itself just personifies what we have been talking about. When you get gangs, when you get repeated offenders, when you get drugs, you get a result of innocent people being the bystanders to violence.” The shooting death is the first this year for the 28th Precinct, which encompasses the neighborhood area of Harlem above Central Park.
