The early Sunday morning shooting of a Brooklyn man, whose family said has no known enemies, ended in the 51-year-old father’s death. Sherwood (Prince) Beverly was shot in the head at around 5:15 a.m. and was pronounced dead soon thereafter at a nearby hospital. The New York Police Department reportedly has no suspects in custody.
According to The New York Daily News , Beverly had taken the rare opportunity to go out with three friends to Moka nightclub in Richmond Hill. The four of them were sitting in a gray Mercedes Benz SUV at a red light in South Ozone Park, Queens. The assailants pulled up and started shooting into their vehicle shattering the windows.
The driver of the Mercedes is a 50-year-old man whose neck was grazed by one of the bullets aimed at the vehicle. A 50-year-old woman who was in the backseat was shot in the shoulder while a 44-year-old woman was unharmed. The driver and the other passengers survived, but Beverly wasn’t so fortunate.
The driver immediately sped to the closest police station. Officers at the 69th Precinct in Canarsie called an ambulance who then took Beverly to Brookdale University Hospital. He was pronounced dead within 30 minutes of the shooting.
Family and friends are struggling to understand why Beverly’s life was cut short. The father of two rarely went out socially. He worked at a gym and was said to follow an alcohol-free lifestyle. Beverly’s brother-in-law, Sherrod Warren, believes that the intended target of the shooting was the driver of the Mercedes. Warren called him “Honest Abe” because he had never known him to get into any type of altercation in over 20 years.
1 dead, 2 wounded when gunmen open fire on car at light https://t.co/KbzZtsaf1g pic.twitter.com/6SYfKFLWYj
— Eyewitness News (@ABC7NY) January 28, 2018
While police are searching for clues to the identity of the culprits who fled the scene in a dark-colored SUV, Beverly’s 28-year-old nephew struggles with the senselessness of it all. Anthony Beverly insists that he had no issues with anyone, nor did he drink or even go out partying. Being on with friends on this night was a rare exception for the known homebody. Family friend Willie Porters hopes that the suspects are found sooner than later.
“He was a beautiful guy,” 54-year-old Willie Porters told The News . “They need to catch whoever did this. You can’t just go around shooting people on the expressway.”
