Gangster NYC gunman who shot 7-year-old girl with stray bullet dodges major prison time
The family of a 7-year-old girl struck by a stray bullet in Harlem in 2024 still can’t “escape the trauma” of the crime, prosecutors said Tuesday — as one of her gangbanger shooters dodged major time behind bars.
Daniel Idowu, 21, landed eight and a half years in prison as part of a plea deal after admitting to mistakenly shooting little Fatou Keita, who took a bullet shot to the stomach on her way to buy a new pair of glasses Nov. 11, 2024.
“The pair of glasses that started on the girl’s face ended up on the ground and later in a police bag,” Manhattan District Attorney Dylan Los Huertos told Judge Steven Statsinger.
Idowu, who was 19 at the time of the shooting, could have faced up to 25 years in prison under the plea deal, and prosecutors had sought 14 years, but Statsinger said the shooter deserved less time to give him a chance to “put this matter behind” him.
Prosecutors said the family meanwhile still struggles to recover from the “lost semblance of safety they once joyed” before the afternoon shooting at the corner of West 145th Street and Bradhurst Avenue.
“Their hopes are to find a new place to live to escape the trauma,” Los Huertos said.
Neither Keita nor her family were present in court, and they also declined to submit a victim-impact statement.
Keita spent a month hospitalized as she recovered from the shooting that “tore through her stomach” and caused significant digestive issues, according to prosecutors.
Prosecutors said Idowu and accomplice True Womack’s motive for the shooting was driven by “antagonism by a rival drill rapper.” The pair fired off nine rounds at a foe gangbanger over the feud — but missed and hit the poor girl.
Idowu, who did not speak in court, pleaded guilty to second-degree attempted murder Nov. 11, 2025, a rap that carries a sentence of up to 25 years in prison.
Womack, who was 17 at the time of the shooting, was already infamously ripped by a judge for the brazen shooting that “shocks the conscience of anyone living in New York.”
His case remains active.
Keita, who is now 8, was honored by the NYPD last summer when they gifted her with her first bicycle.
Her family did not respond to a Post request for comment Tuesday.
