The 45-year-old Queens woman gunned down by her estranged husband
during a brazen, broad-daylight shooting
was trying to protect her daughter when she bravely stepped up to her killer and was fatally shot, prosecutors said Thursday.
Chaneil Ramsay and her 21-year-old daughter had managed to hide behind a parked car when
Audwin Caines
, 62, began shooting at them at 2:30 p.m. on June 23 in St. Albans.
As she hid behind the car, Ramsay “stepped away from the vehicle” and approached her former husband, who shot her “multiple times about the head and body,” according to the criminal complaint filed against Caines.
Queens prosecutors believe Ramsay did this “in an effort to shield her daughter” from Caines.
Ramsay was hit by the gunfire at point-blank range, prosecutors said.
“There were like eight or nine shots,” a horrified witness told the Daily News at the time. “He hit her in the head.”
Ramsay was also shot in the arm and stomach, according to cops. Her wig was found on the ground near her body, horrified witnesses said.
EMS rushed her to
Jamaica Hospital
, where she died a short time later.
Two hours before
the fatal shooting at 127th Ave.
near 176th St., Caines had smashed the window to Ramsay’s Jeep Cherokee. He also sent her threats on WhatsApp.
“I’m going to keep f—ing up your s—-,” he wrote next to a photo of the smashed Jeep window, according to court papers. “You want to f— me over now, I’m doing it to you.”
Caines, who is homeless, was grabbed by U.S. marshals and the NYPD’s Fugitive Task Force in Harlem on Tuesday. He’s been charged with murder, attempted murder for shooting at his stepdaughter, weapons possession and criminal mischief for destroying Ramsay’s Jeep window, officials said.
“[Ramsay] was senselessly gunned down on the streets of St. Albans by her estranged husband, as part of an escalating series of violent incidents,” Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz said Thursday. “This murder shocked the community, and my office will seek justice for the family of Chaneil Ramsay.”
A Queens Criminal Court judge ordered Caines held without bail following his arraignment late Wednesday. A call to his attorney, James Shalley, was not immediately returned Thursday.
Besides the murder and attempted murder charges, Caines is facing an additional assault charge for stabbing Ramsay in the chest with a broken liquor bottle on July 1, 2024, nearly a year before he killed her.
Ramsay was hospitalized, but managed to survive that earlier brutal attack, prosecutors said.
The doting mother lived in South Jamaica, less than five blocks from where she was fatally gunned down on the street.
“She was a nurse who lived with her mother and young son,” one neighbor said of Ramsay. “She was a nice lady — I can’t believe it.”
In the past, cops had repeatedly responded to Ramsay’s home to stop fights between her and Caines.
When questioned after the shooting, Ramsay’s daughter identified Caines as her mother’s killer, a police source with knowledge of the case said.
