Witness recalls 11-year-old Bronx’s agonizing final moments Kyhara Tay

The parents of a mortally wounded 11-year-old girl howled in grief and fell to the ground during their little girl’s final agonizing minutes at Lincoln Hospital, a witness said.

Maria Lopez, a patient advocate at the hospital, described the heartbreaking events to the Post on Wednesday – and said Kyhara Tay’s father refused to believe his daughter had left while her mother begged for her life.

“‘Girl, stop playing with me! Wake up! Wake up!'” mother Yahisha Gomez begged Monday as her baby daughter disappeared before her eyes, Lopez said.

“But she was gone,” Lopez said. “You saw her breathe her last.”

She said Gomez was distraught when her daughter was rushed into emergency surgery with a gunshot wound to the stomach – only to die 10 minutes later after being rushed to intensive care.

Lopez said the slain girl’s father, Sokpini Tay, even had to be restrained as he tried to get to his dying daughter.

“That’s how hurt he was,” Lopez said. “He wanted to go to the operating room to help save his baby. What parent wouldn’t want that?”

Kyhara was outside a nail salon in the Bronx around 5 p.m. Monday when she was hit in the stomach by a stray bullet. She stumbled into the drawing room and collapsed.

First responders then took the girl to Lincoln Hospital.

“I was there [the] trauma [Unit] when they brought her in,” Lopez recalled. “I saw them take her out of surgery and put her in intensive care. She lasted about 10 minutes in the intensive care unit.

“Both told her to wake up. they kissed her. They held hands,” Lopez said of the grieving parents.

“It was awful,” she said. “As a mother of a mother, I hugged her and shared my tears with her. Pain like that never goes away.”

Police said two men on a moped, including the shooter, aimed at a group of men standing nearby but instead hit Kyhara. Police are now offering a $10,000 reward for information leading to the shooter’s arrest.

“She was a promising young life brought to an end by mindless gunmen firing at a target without regard for others,” Bronx District Attorney Darcel Clark said at a memorial erected next to Kyhara’s shooting.

“To the individuals – and I’m speaking directly to the cowards who did this on Monday, okay?” Clark said. “Those who shot and killed Kyhara, I want you to know that as the Bronx District Attorney, we’re coming for you.

“Hand yourself in, because we’re coming for you.”

Prosecutors said Kyhara was the second child killed in the Bronx so far this year – including Angellyh Yambo, 16, who was gunned down outside her school.

In total, Clark said, 16 children were shot that year, all but two of them between the ages of 5 and 15 in the county in 2022.