A troubled exotic dancer who recently separated from his wife and lost his children to foster care was shot dead Thursday morning on a sidewalk in Gramercy Park, police and witnesses said.
Imani Armstrong was returning home from a late shift at her other job at an IHOP around 5 a.m. when a masked gunman snuck up and punched her in the back of the head at East 14e Irving Street and Place.
“When I heard the shot, I was like, ‘Oh shit.’ It was like a strong blow. . . I heard a gunshot and then silence,” said Maximillian Stebelsky, 18, a neuroscience student who lives in a nearby NYU dorm.
“I never expected something like this to happen, especially in front of my house.”
The motive for the killing remained unknown, but the shooting was not random, cops said.
“The individual was targeted,” department chief Kenneth Corey said Thursday. “We have a number of suspects we are looking into, but we don’t want to commit anything at this time. But I’m very comfortable saying it wasn’t a random attack.
The shooter and a woman, both dressed in black, were seen fleeing north, but the woman may have been a bystander fleeing the gunfire, sources said.
The tragedy comes after bad luck for Armstrong, who had just received divorce papers from his wife and moved out of the apartment they shared about a month ago.
Her children were in foster care on Staten Island and she was taking anger management classes in hopes of getting them back, colleagues told the Post. But before the murder, she didn’t appear to “have anything on her mind”, a colleague said.
“She was happy. She was greeting customers and stuff,” an IHOP colleague told the Post of Armstrong’s final minutes.
She had stayed past her usual shift because the restaurant was busy and headed to 14th Street to catch the train as she normally did when leaving for the day, the co-worker said. Armstrong, who was originally from Texas, had tried to improve, the IHOP employee said.
” She was good. She did a good job,” the colleague said. “She got along with everyone. She knew a lot of people here.
Armstrong, who danced as “Red”, was fighting to get her children back and had recently been robbed by a friend at the club where she was dancing, her colleague claimed. She also had problems at home.
Cops had been called to a Queens apartment in January 2021 where she and her partner had an argument over their children and her partner strangled her and pushed her to the ground, sources said.
Armstrong told his co-worker that the ex contacted him last week via text message saying “I love you, I miss you,” the co-worker said.
“I told him, ‘Don’t fall for it. Don’t answer,’ the colleague said. “I knew his children were taken from him because of this lady.
A 56-year-old man who gave his first name Manny said he was working at his nearby coffee cart when the shooting happened.
“I was cooking when I heard a big boom,” Manny said. “I said, ‘Oh shit, what was that? I thought it was a car or a truck [that] crushed. I ran outside and saw the lady on the sidewalk.
Before the shooting, “I didn’t hear any commotion, nothing,” he said.
When he saw the body, Manny thought, “Oh my God. I was wondering if she had kids, what about her family,” he said.
There were other people around “who called 911” so he didn’t, he said.
“It’s a shame,” Manny said. “You have these people killing each other. They kill someone and the system lets them back down. They’re back on the street and they’re doing the same thing again. It’s crazy.”
“The president, the politicians, they don’t do anything about it. All they think about is getting re-elected,” he said. “You have sick, screwed up people here.”
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