Prestine Lee cannot remember who it was that told her that her grandson had been shot and killed Monday night.
“Someone came upstairs last night to my apartment when I was cooking and told me that Shamel got shot,” she said. She looks downcast at her wide open jeans, her salt-and-pepper head lowered, hands tucked into her black jersey. Shamel Lee, 30, was shot on the corner of Skillman Street and Dekalb Avenue at around 9 p.m. in the confines of 79 precinct in Bed-Stuy, police said.
He died in route to King’s County Hospital. A stray bullet in the same attack also wounded an unnamed 43-year old woman who is in a stable condition at the same hospital.
“All I knew was that my child got shot and nothing else mattered,” Prestine Lee said. “I raised him since birth. He was my child.”
The two lived together in the Lafayette Gardens housing project. There is a candle vigil in the lobby of the building and on a cardboard side of a box stuck on the wall, writings from several people who knew Lee.
“He was a good kid,” Lee said. “This is the first killing in our family.”
His mother, Wanda Lee, lives in Alabama with his four other siblings and will be in Brooklyn in a few days. Nicknamed Geo, Lee used to walk around the streets of his neighborhood a lot.
“He sometimes worked in construction and would come back home all dirty,” she said with a laugh. “Thank God he wasn’t married or didn’t have any kids. He didn’t even have a special someone, just loads of friends. Everyone in the community liked him.” Lee is still waiting for her grandson’s body to be released from the hospital so that the family can prepare for the funeral. It will most probably be at the Messianic Temple.
Lee retired two years ago from LBJ Clinic branch at Nostrand and Lafayette where she worked as a lab technician. When asked if she would like to move someplace else after the killing, she said no.
“I’ve lived here my whole life,” she said. “If it wasn’t him last night, it would’ve been someone else from the community.”
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