(Photo via Twitter: @ericadamsfornyc)
By Maureen Dowd | The New York Times
On a breezy June night in the Bronx, I was on the balcony at the restaurant Zona De Cuba, sipping a mojito, vibing to a salsa band and peeking at a special menu for the plant-based mayor of New York, Eric Adams, who was soon to arrive.
Under the heading “Mayor Adams’ Corner” could be found “Eat My Veggies” cauliflower and broccoli and “Bite My Eggplant,” a dish spiced with roasted pepper sauce.
Not a fish in sight.
I pulled out a notebook, getting ready to interview Adams. But Maxwell Young, the mayor’s communications director, announced, “We have to go.” The mayor had pulled up outside in his black Suburban, but plans had changed. We ran out to the motorcade and headed to the Upper East Side.
Suddenly, we were staring down at a sidewalk full of blood. A young woman had been shot in the head an hour earlier as she pushed her 3-month-old daughter in a stroller on 95th Street.
Standing next to a school playground, John Miller, the storied deputy police commissioner, briefed the mayor sotto voce about the 40-caliber bullet casing, powder burns and a young man in a black hoodie shooting at point-blank range, execution-style. The woman was 20 and her name was Azsia Johnson. It was probably the baby’s father who was the shooter, he said. She had filed a domestic violence report against him.
In a couple of days, the police would say that this beautiful young woman, a doting mother of two, had been lured to the playground by her abusive ex, who told her he had some things for their baby daughter. He shot her and ran, leaving the baby on the street, and was arrested two days later.
