NYPD searching for 3 men in East Harlem shooting that killed 69-year-old woman

Police said Thursday they were looking for three men in connection with a shooting that killed a 69-year-old woman near her East Harlem home Wednesday afternoon.

Robin Wright was fatally shot on East 110th Street and Madison Avenue around 12:30 p.m., NYPD officials said. She was walking back to her building after getting Chinese food down the block, according to her friend Juanita Arnold, who was with Wright when she was struck.

Officials described the suspects as three men in dark hoodies and black face masks. One was wearing gray sweatpants, another was wearing white sneakers and a third was wearing black-and-red sneakers, police said.

The NYPD said early Thursday detectives were still investigating who opened fire and why.

“We saw guys running from this direction to that direction … six or seven gunshots went off,” Arnold said in the shooting’s aftermath Wednesday. “I was standing right with her. I turned around, she was on the ground.”

Wright lived in NYCHA’s Lehman Village development on Madison Avenue between East 110th and 109th streets, just a block from Central Park, according to police. Her brother Glenn Williams told Gothamist she is survived by a son, a daughter and several grandchildren.

Residents of Wright’s building remembered her as a longtime member of the community who always sat smiling on a bench outside.

“I was so hurt that I haven’t even been out [of] my house,” 86-year-old neighbor Alfred Mack said Thursday. “I just saw her the day before.”

At the crime scene Wednesday, some of Wright's neighbors gestured toward her abandoned walker, surrounded by a pool of blood on the sidewalk, and said one of them could have been killed by the gunfire instead.

“It makes me nervous,” Jo Ann Canty, vice president of the Lehman Village tenant association, said. “The summer was kind of quiet, but now it’s starting back up again. It wasn’t like this years ago.”

She said city officials needed to do more to get guns off the street. Mayor Eric Adams’ administration said in late July it had removed more than 3,000 illegal guns from city streets this year, and NYPD data shows shootings citywide are currently down 20% compared to last year.

Wright was shot a short walk from where 61-year-old Excenia Mette was gunned down on Malcolm X Boulevard near West 113th Street in April. Police said she was a bystander caught between two groups firing at each other. They later arrested 23-year-old Bronx resident Ricky Shelby, charging him with murder in connection to the incident. Harlem resident Darious Smith, also 23, was arrested and charged with firearm possession in connection with the shooting.

Shootings in the 23rd Precinct, which includes much of East Harlem, were down by two this year as of Aug. 24, compared to the same period last year, according to NYPD data. The precinct had recorded two homicides, down from seven by the same point in 2024.

This story has been updated with additional information.

To learn more about gun violence patterns across New York City, check out Gothamist’s map of shootings over the past five years.