A New York mom from Queens is pleading for an end to gun violence after her 21-year-old daughter was brutally chased down and shot in the head by a “mystery” man on Saturday.
Police revealed that Dashanna Donovan, 21, was found with a fatal bullet wound to the head around 9:30 p.m. Friday when officers responded to a call about an assault at 96th Street near 31st Avenue in East Elmhurst.
Cops said multiple shell casings were scattered across the floor of Donovan’s apartment, and the walls were riddled with bullet holes.
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“I heard she saw the person and she ran so it’s definitely someone she knew,” her mom Helena Hypolite told The Post by phone. “Who? We don’t know. It’s definitely a mystery.”
On Friday, Donovan’s boss at the McDonald’s where she worked called her around 11 p.m. to ask her to cover a shift on Saturday, yet the 21-year-old was already dead, said the supervisor to The Post.
Surveillance footage from outside the building showed the stranger chasing the young woman into the apartment with a firearm, the sources said.
Nonetheless, police say the nature of the relationship between the victim and her killer was unclear.
As of Saturday afternoon, there had been no arrests. “I’m hurt,” the heartbroken Queens mom said on the violence her daughter suffered. “I feel broken like a piece of me is gone.”
A neighbor stated that he sat right across the street when he heard the shots.
“We were sitting outside enjoying the last of the summer,” said the man, who wished to remain anonymous. “I heard three shots — pop, pop, pop — one after the other.”
“It was coming from around the back,” he said, pointing across the street at the attached house.
“I didn’t see anything, I just heard it. We were scared. We ran inside because we didn’t know what was happening.”
Dashanna Donovan was born on the US Virgin Island of St. Thomas and loved to dance, her devastated mother said.
Asked about what she’d miss most about her daughter, the mom said : “Her smile. It just brightened up the room. She was always funny, she liked to crack jokes.”
The grieving mom pleaded for an end to gun violence and urged the killer to man up and come forward.
“I feel like he should turn himself in,” she said. “I don’t understand how he slept last night because I wasn’t able to sleep.”
