Police are investigating whether the savage “mystery” gunman who ambushed and killed a 21-year-old woman at her Queens apartment was her abusive ex-boyfriend from South Carolina.
Dashanna Donovan was found lying face down in a pool of blood around 9:20 p.m. Friday with multiple gunshot wounds to her upper body and head in East Elmhurst, NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny said in an update Thursday.
Video captured her “hanging out” and sitting in an open courtyard in the back of her building near 96th Street and 31st Avenue, when she suddenly looked up and saw the gunman bolting toward her.
“It seems just from her reaction, she knows who the perpetrator is. The perpetrator has his left arm extended, holding a gun,” Kenny told reporters.
“She tries to run. She tries to run so frantically away from the scene, she actually runs out of her own shoes. She tries to get into the basement, where the perpetrator catches up to her and shoots her multiple times in the head, causing her demise,” he added.
Video surveillance captured the gunman wearing a “very distinctive Under Armor blue hoodie” in the area as early as 7 p.m., Kenny said.
“We have him basically walking back and forth in the 90s in Jackson Heights, from Astoria Boulevard to Northern Boulevard, just walking the neighborhood, when suddenly he pounces at 9:20 p.m.”
After the shooting, he was seen on a bus and a train back into Manhattan, where he did not pay his fare at the Canal Street station, cops said.
“So all indications are, you know, from Queens, [he] made his way back to Lower Manhattan, and then we’re still tracking video from there,” the NYPD official said.
After working with Donovan’s family, investigators were led to her ex-boyfriend, whom she dated while living in South Carolina, Kenny said.
Donovan moved to the Big Apple just six months ago to live with her grandmother and cousin and escape an abusive relationship with her ex.
He is wanted for domestic violence in South Carolina. At some point, the pair worked together at a Walmart, police added.
Cops said they have identified a person of interest, but have not yet confirmed it to be her ex-boyfriend, noting they do not have probable cause at this time.
“It’s a possibility [that it’s the boyfriend]. We’re not taking that off the table, but it’s not confirmed,” Kenny said.
She hadn’t filed any complaints about her boyfriend in New York, authorities confirmed.
“I heard she saw the person and she ran, so it’s definitely someone she knew,” her mom Helena Hypolite previously told The Post by phone.
“Who? We don’t know. It’s definitely a mystery,” she said.
“I’m hurt,” the heartbroken mom said. “I feel broken like a piece of me is gone.”
The young victim’s boss at a McDonald’s where she worked called Donovan around 11 p.m. Friday to ask her to cover a shift on Saturday — but she was already dead.
“She worked at a McDonald’s. Everybody said she was a great employee. She did the overnight shift there from 5 pm to 1 am,” Kenny said.
Donovan, who was born on the US Virgin Island of St. Thomas, loved dancing and her mother’s chicken curry, her grieving mom recalled.
“Her smile,” the mom said when asked what she’d miss most about her daughter. “It just brightened up the room. She was always funny; she liked to crack jokes.”
If you or someone you know is affected by any of the issues raised in this story, call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1.800.799.SAFE (7233) or text START to 88788.
