UPDATE September 5: A man has been arrested and charged with the murder of Imani Armstrong in Gramercy Park last Thursday. Clarkson Wilson, 44, was associated with the victim and was the father of at least one of her children. He allegedly waited for the young woman to leave the IHOP, followed her, and killed her.
Imani Armstrong, 25, originally from Texas, was on her way home after her overnight shift at an IHOP early Thursday morning at around 5 am. Not the safest time to be walking the streets of Manhattan.
A gunman snuck up being her and shot her in the head in the upscale Gramercy Park neighborhood of East 14th Street and Irving Place.
Police believe the woman, an exotic dancer while not working at the IHOP, which may or may not be relevant, was targeted.
Chief of Police Kenneth Corey said they are looking at several suspects, and can’t give more information, but they believe it wasn’t a random attack.
Police say that a witness saw the shooter, who may be in his 20’s, fleeing north with a woman dressed in black, but it was possible that the woman was a pedestrian and unrelated to the shooter.
Random details, and maybe not a random attack, but definitely a senseless one.
The tragedy followed after a difficult time for the victim, who had been served divorce papers and recently had to move out of the apartment she shared with her partner.
She has children who were removed from the home and are in foster care. She was taking anger management classes to help her get custody of her children again.
According to a coworker, she seemed cheerful enough and interacted with the public in the IHOP decently.
Employees at the IHOP said she stayed later at the restaurant than her shift that night, because they were busy. She headed toward the 14th Street subway.
In her other job, she worked as an exotic dancer by the name of “Red.” Along with the stress of trying to get her kids back, she had been robbed by someone at the club where she dances. At home, before she moved out, she had been fighting with her partner. Cops had been called to her Queens apartment in the past because of physical violence in the home.
So why was the IHOP worker/exotic dancer, who had been going through a hard time, gunned down “execution style” in the middle of the sidewalk? It wasn’t a robbery, as apparently the killer fled without taking anything from the victim.
Maybe there was no reason. Maybe even if there was a reason, it was senseless. Maybe a label of “not random” somehow makes it less insane.
NYC Mayor Eric Adams commented on the incident, “It appears as though the young lady was an intended target, we are unclear yet but we are going to continue, the investigation is still new. We don’t have much more than that at this time, but again, it really highlights what the governor and I talked about yesterday and what we are continuing to talk about — the over-proliferation of guns on our streets and people using them for violent means.”
A witness working at a nearby coffee truck said, “It’s a shame. You have these people killing one another. They kill somebody and the system lets them back out. They are right back on the streets and they do the same s–t again. It’s crazy.”
Such is violence in NYC, and in urban centers all over the US, and no suburban neighborhood is immune. Life in America. Senseless gunfire. It’s nothing new and nothing seems to be changing.