‘This has devastated our family:’ Young mother, 21, killed in Newark shooting was an innocent bystander – NJ.com

Leah Sutton was on her deathbed when she made the request.

Her family surrounded her, taking shifts around the clock to offer comfort as she lay in her first-floor, railroad apartment in Newark’s West Ward. She had just one wish before she succumbed to colon cancer in 2018.

“Please, don’t let the streets get my son,” she said.

Sutton, 48, never worried about her daughter, Rashidah Sutton-Bryant.

No one did.

“But the streets took her daughter, her baby girl,” Rashidah’s uncle, Darren Sutton, said in a phone interview Wednesday. Then he paused.

“I definitely was not looking out for that one.”

Sutton-Bryant, 21, was visiting her boyfriend and friends July 26 at the Bradley Court housing complex on North Munn Avenue when she was shot at about 10:20 p.m., family and authorities said. She was taken to University Hospital by someone nearby and pronounced dead just before 11 p.m.

The Essex County Prosecutor’s Office, the agency investigating Sutton-Bryant’s death, has not provided any additional details about the shooting.

A law enforcement source told NJ Advance Media that it appears Sutton-Bryant was not the intended target. The incident was just one in a recent spate of violence that has roiled Newark.

Sutton-Bryant had no criminal record, and she wasn’t known to “hang out like that,” said her aunt, Kelly Sutton-Marshall.

“I want people to know who she was,” Sutton-Marshall told NJ Advance Media. “Often when things happen like that, they say negative things because they don’t know the whole story.”

Her close-knit family, which vacationed together annually, has been rocked by the news of Sutton-Bryant’s death. The family has dealt with tragedy, mainly as the result of health complications. But no one had died from gun violence.

“She has so many people who loved her,” Sutton-Marshall said. “She was truly, truly loved by many. This has devastated our family.”

When Leah Sutton died, Rashidah Sutton-Bryant was the one who stepped up.

She cared for her younger brother, who is still in high school, as well as her own 4-year-old son, Aiden. Even when she wasn’t home, she cared for other people’s children.

Sutton-Bryant worked at a daycare center before she was laid off in March as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. She was excited to return to work, her father, Frederick Bryant, said.

Kelly Sutton-Marshall said her niece loved working with kids and disabled adults.

“She was always a big help to her mother,” Sutton-Marshall said. “She was very fun, loving and she loved her family.”

Sutton-Bryant went to work with kids immediately after she graduated from West Side High School in Newark.

The second of three children, she was known as the quiet, shy one.

Darren Sutton recalled a family function in which his niece stared at him with a blank expression on her face. He asked her why she was looking at him and she responded, “I’m waiting for you to say something funny because you’re always saying something funny.”

From that moment on, every time Darren Sutton opened his mouth, she broke out in a laughing fit.

“She was just so silly,” he said. “I’m going to miss my niece. She’s definitely too young. No one is supposed to die like that, especially in that manner. I can’t imagine what she went through that night.”

With an unexpected death comes unexpected emotions.

Darren Sutton expressed how he hadn’t had a chance to cry when first reached by phone Wednesday morning.

“I’m just angry right now,” he said. “The emotions are just coming over me, at this very moment. Rashidah is my baby sister’s youngest daughter. She was a mom. She took very good care of…”

He stopped mid-sentence.

“Just call me back,” he said, before becoming overwhelmed with sorrow.

Sutton and his sisters are now left planning funeral arrangements, ordering flowers and notifying other family members.

Sutton, who was known as “Uncle Shake,” said he and his siblings are “the ones up at bat” to deal with the tragedy since all the elders are dead.

“Rashidah would have been the next generation to take care of the ones under her,” he said. “We have a large family, a close family. She’s just going to be missed.”

Sutton-Bryant’s father, Frederick, said his “mind went blank” when he learned of his daughter’s death.

“I couldn’t believe it,” he said. “I just talked to her earlier that day.”

Sutton-Bryant had called her dad to check on him after he left the house because of an altercation with her brother.

“My daughter was the sweetest person you could ever know,” he said. “She was loved by everybody. She lived for her son, and she was a good mother to him. I’m going to miss her.”

A bloody couple of weeks in the state’s most populous city have taken its toll on the community.

Sutton-Bryant was one of four people who have been killed since July 20, a period when at least 18 shootings unfolded in Newark. On Sunday alone, there were two shootings and a fatal stabbing. In one shooting, a 10-year-old girl was injured when she was hit with a projectile, officials said.

The city’s mayor and other activists have condemned the violence.

“While homicides have been down in Newark for the past four years, this uptick in violence that our city and nation is experiencing during this precarious time will not be tolerated and must be stopped,” Newark Mayor Ras Baraka said Monday in a statement. “Now more than ever, we need the help of every resident, every community group, and every resource, to fight against what appears to be one of our toughest adversaries.”

Keesha Eure, the chairwoman of the Newark Anti-Violence Coalition, said: “Love and appreciate your families and your community. Put the guns down.”

Community activist Solomon Middleton Williams, a representative of the Newark Community Street Team, said the violence in the city will not ebb until there’s a significant investment in its people, including training so residents can develop professional skills.

Money invested in the city, he said, goes to big businesses and not the people who are living in poverty.

“There have always been these neighborhoods, like Bradley Court, these neighborhoods historically, there’s been no investment,” he explained. “Young men who don’t have careers or skills to find work and they do what’s easy, and that easy thing often is turning to crime. We need strategic investment in our people.”

Williams said after the death of Sutton-Bryant, a group of NCST members walked the West Ward to offer services to area families, such as counseling.

“Often the outside world thinks this is a natural occurrence to Black communities and we’re not affected by it,” he said. “But we are affected by it.”

Crime in the city, he said, is not the result of gang turf battles that are often depicted on TV. Williams said it’s the result of “interpersonal conflicts.”

“Once a victim becomes a victim, they often become a perpetrator,” he said. “And we’re trying to stop a victim from becoming a perpetrator.”

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Alex Napoliello may be reached at anapoliello@njadvancemedia.com.