Thirty years ago, I spent the last Friday night in July outside a funeral home in East New York where Mayor David Dinkins was paying his respects to the family of a 9-year-old girl who was shot to death earlier in the week while asleep in their car.
It wasn't even the most heart-wrenching killing of a child that week in that Brooklyn neighborhood. Three days before the wake, on July 24, 1990, 1-year-old Yaritimi Fruto was struck by a bullet intended for her father as he drove through East New York on his way to turn himself in to serve a prison term on a gun charge. He was killed instantly; Yaritimi died of her wound two days later. That also happened to be the day that 3-year-old Ben Williams, sleeping on his family's couch, was struck by one at at least 18 bullets fired through the door of his family's apartment. A drug-dealing older brother was apparently the target.
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