BEDFORD-STUYVESTANT (WPIX)—
The wife of former NBA All-Star World B. Free was fatally shot as she tried to mediate a fight outside her a family home in Brooklyn Sunday evening.At around 9:30 p.m., a group of people jumped Laquan Williams, 25, longtime boyfriend of Carrie Audrey Johnson's niece, in front of 149 Clifton Place.
Johnson, 51, tried to end the fight when shots rang out.
She was shot once in the head and was pronounced dead at the scene.
Her nephew Daniel, 14, was shot once in the leg and was transported to Kings County Hospital in stable condition.
Williams suffered a cut to his left cheek and was treated at the scene.
He was also brought to the local precinct and questioned by police about the circumstances of the shooting. Williams has a long prior criminal record and unconfirmed reports say he was uncooperative with police.
According to Johnson's brother Kenny, 47, about five shots were fired.
Johnson, who lived in East Orange, New Jersey, was visiting her daughter at the time of the shooting. Her family has lived in the same Brooklyn house for six generations -- over a century.
Family members describe Johnson as a well-liked, kind, generous woman.
"We either throw Christmas at her house [or] Thanksgiving. She was always giving money," Jeromeka Johnson, the victim's niece, told PIX News, "My grandma lives around the corner on Greene [Avenue]. This is her second daughter to die in one year."
"This is tragic. [She] was in the wrong place," Glenn Free, Johnson's brother-in-law, told PIX News, "I dont understand how somebody could be so evil like that."
Before the recession, Johnson worked on Wall Street.
Family members told PIX News that they were unable to make contact with Free to inform him of his wife's death.
Free, who was born Lloyd Bernard Free until he legally changed his name in 1980, is currently on tour with the Philadelphia 76ers and works as an ambassador for the team he used to play on during his 13-year NBA career.
The investigation into the shooting is ongoing.
