On December 3, 2015, Kenly Joseph a 44-year-old Black man from Brooklyn, was drawn into a moment that unfolded like a trap closing. Just after 5 p.m., on East 91st Street near Clarkson Avenue in East Flatbush, he stood outside a car beside a 33-year-old woman who believed she was meeting her ex for a child-custody exchange. Instead, police said the woman’s ex-boyfriend, Jerry Paterson of Queens, walked up to the vehicle and, in an instant, turned the sidewalk into a crime scene.
Authorities said Paterson shot Joseph in the head and then fired into the car, striking the woman. The sound of gunfire shattered the evening, and the violence played out in front of the couple’s two children, ages 11 and 6, who were nearby and not physically injured. Joseph was rushed to Brookdale Hospital, where he was pronounced dead. The woman was taken to Kings County Hospital and was reported in stable condition as the immediate danger to her life eased.
There was no chase and no later arrest. Police said that after the shooting, Paterson moved back toward his own car and fatally shot himself in the head, making the case, in practical terms, a murder-suicide with the suspected gunman dead before detectives could bring charges in court. Reports described the shooting as domestic-violence related and framed it as a “crime of passion,” with investigators focusing on the relationship ties and the custody handoff that set the scene.
In the days after, the corner carried the weight of what happened there. A makeshift memorial appeared as neighbors and loved ones tried to translate shock into candles and quiet gatherings. Those who knew Joseph spoke of him as someone who worked construction jobs on major city projects and who carried music with him—someone who could pick up a guitar and bring a small celebration into ordinary time—until that ordinary day broke apart on the street outside a Brooklyn building.
