Deadly Shooting of Young Mother Spurs Community Concern

Editor's Note: This story was first published in the June edition of the Tremont Tribune, out now.

Family and friends erected a shrine for Claudia Millan on the street corner where she died. (Photo by Jeanmarie Evelly)

Summer started off on a tragic foot this year, as an exceptionally warm Memorial Day weekend saw the horrific and fatal shooting of a young mother in the Bathgate neighborhood.

Claudia Millan, 29, was shot in the head on the corner of Park Avenue and East 178th Street on Sunday, May 29. According to the New York Times, Millan was walking with her 2-year-old son in tow at the time of the incident, which occurred around 10:30 p.m. as she made her way towards her home on E. Tremont Avenue.

Bronx News Weekend Roundup, May 31

Weather: The holiday weekend has ushered in a wave of summer-like weather. Today will remain sunny with a high of 81 degrees. Scattered storms are in the forecast for tomorrow.

Story of the Day: Bronx Woman Murdered While Holding 2-Year-Old Son
A woman was shot and killed Sunday night in East Tremont while walking home with her youngest child, who was found crying next to his mother's body on a Park Avenue sidewalk near 178th Street. Claudia Millan, 29, was shot in the head just a block from her home, where her brother and three other children were waiting for her. Her two-year-old son Jah-mere was found unharmed other than a cut on his calf. Police have no suspects as of yesterday.

The tragic act of violence came at the end of a bloody Memorial Day weekend: eight people were shot to death in seven different shootings across the city, according to the Daily News, including 16-year-old Johnny Moore, who was killed in Mott Haven on Sunday night, supposedly during an argument over a basketball game. On Friday, three other people--including a five-year-old girl--were injured in a shootout in Soundview.

Quick Hits:
A 14-month-old girl is in critical condition at Jacobi Hospital after falling five stories out of her apartment window on Monday morning.

Hip-hop pioneer and spoken word poet Gil Scott-Heron, who grew up in the Bronx for most of his teeange years and attended the Fieldston School in Riverdale, died on Friday at the age of 62.

A Bronx man was arrested Friday for calling in a bomb threat to television station W-PIX11--because he no longer wanted to see reruns of the Charlie Sheen sitcom "Two And A Half Men." Freddy Caldwell threatened to detonate the building if they didn't stop running the show, according to police.

Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, a Bronx native, has received a whopping $1.2  million to pen a memoir for Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.

A section of a South Bronx street, on Cortlandt Avenue and 156th Street, was renamed this weekend to honor Sgt. Jose Velez, who was killed in Iraq five years ago at the age of 35.

City beaches--including the Bronx's own Orchard Beach--officially opened to visitors this weekend.

An intersection at the corner of Olinville and Waring Avenues will finally be getting a traffic light installed, to the relief of parents and administrators at nearby PS 96 who say several accidents have taken place there.

This fall, a group of entrepreneurs are set to unveil the first beer named after the borough this fall--the Bronx Pale Ale. 

Ricard Azzopardi, who works as a spokesman and aide to Bronx State Senator Jeff Klein, chased off a would-be rapist who was attacking a woman on the street outside of his home in Albany.

Editor's Note: BxNN will keep posting this clock in our daily news roundups -- tallying the days until the NYPD releases neighborhood sector crime stats, which we requested from them via a Freedom of Information Law request last year. For some background, see our Norwood News' editorial here.