The 2021 incident took place within the Upper West Side’s Douglass Houses (Google Maps).
Antjuan Smith, 19, has been sentenced to 15 years in state prison for shooting a 37-year-old woman through the peephole of her apartment door at a public housing complex on the Upper West Side, Manhattan D.A. Alvin Bragg announced this week.
Smith was part of a gang which operated out of NYCHA’s Douglass Houses, public housing buildings located between West 100th and 104th streets and bound by Amsterdam and Manhattan avenues.
On November 1, 2021 at about 7:30 p.m., Smith – then just 17 – went to the victim’s apartment to prevent her from cooperating with law enforcement. The victim looked through her peephole and Smith fired, striking her in the left eye while the woman’s one-year-old twins were in the apartment. As a result of the shooting, the woman has permanently lost sight in her eye.
In May of this year, a New York Supreme Court jury found Smith guilty of one count of Attempted Murder in the Second Degree, one count of Assault in the First Degree, and one count of Criminal Possession of a Weapon in the Second Degree.
God please help …
The convicted person tried to murder the victim allegedly to prevent her from cooperating with law enforcement, yet he was not charged with anything related to obstruction of justice. Why not?
Another interesting thing about the announcement of this conviction is that the public is not told if the “crew” (i.e. criminal gang) operating in that building has been entirely shut down.
The D.A.’s own press release says, “As proven at trial, SMITH was in a local violent crew, which operated out of Douglass Houses.”
Has law enforcement entirely stopped that “crew” from endangering people in that building?