New York, it seems, will never learn. And if and when it does, it’ll come too late for “Momma Zee.”
According to the New York Post, Excenia Mette — the proprietor of the first woman- and black-owned bodega in Gotham, who was known as “Zeenie” and “Momma Zee” to the Harlem community that loved her — was killed in the crossfire of a gunfight outside her apartment building on Lenox Avenue on Tuesday.
One of the alleged perps in the death of the 61-year-old neighborhood matriarch? Darious Smith, 23, who was out on low bail pending an assault and robbery charge that was due to go to trial in May.
“Sources said Smith is believed to have exchanged shots with the still-at-large gunman whose stray bullet hit Mette in the head as she selflessly rushed outside to check on her grandson Tuesday night,” the Post reported on Thursday.
“Smith was shot in the foot during the scuffle.”
Smith is now behind bars without bail thanks to Manhattan Criminal Court Judge Kacie Lally — although that was hardly the case the last time he was in court, which may have been the problem.
In June 2024, Smith was arrested after he allegedly attacked and slashed two victims with a box cutter while he attempted to steal batteries from e-bikes.
He faced robbery and assault charges from that incident, and the office of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg requested cash bail of $50,000 or a $150,000 bond. However, Judge Michael Ryan set his bail at $10,000, which Smith posted.
Now, this raises a great number of questions about why his bail was set so low, none of which the Post’s report answered.
Does low/no cash bail end up hurting the minority communities liberals say it helps?
Bragg, for those of you who have been keeping up with his exploits that don’t involve prosecuting former presidents for incorrectly itemizing NDAs they signed with garrulous porn stars the better part of a decade ago, is not known as a hard-on-crime, lock-them-up-and-throw-away-the-key type. In fact, he’s more of a give-them-the-key-and-throw-away-the-lockup type, particularly when it comes to bail.
Meanwhile, Ryan was reappointed to the bench by Mayor Eric Adams, a former cop who was elected because he was about as much of a law-and-order candidate as you’ll get in deep-blue New York City. Adams’ electoral problems stem not from the fact that he hasn’t tried to curb crime, but that he has a sideline as a Turkish Airlines frequent (free) flyer and Istanbul influencer, allegedly — things that, while they don’t pose the immediate danger to residents that slashing people with box-cutters while stealing e-bike batteries do, are still very illegal.
Ryan, meanwhile, also doesn’t have a background that suggests he’s soft on crime; a bio blurb noted that he “has served with the Kings County District Attorney’s Office since the start of his legal career, up until his appointment to the bench. During his tenure, he was assigned to various bureaus and has held several titles, including but not limited to serving as a deputy bureau chief of the Early Case Assessment, Rackets, and Criminal Court Bureaus; and as bureau chief of the Human Trafficking Bureau and Investigations Division. For the last eight years, he was chief of the Criminal Courts Unit.”
It’s a rare and strange occurrence, then, when Bragg’s people want to throw the book at a perp and are stopped by a former DA appointed by Eric Adams. The Post shed little light on why this was, which leads one to believe the culprit may, in fact, be the arcane and lenient bail laws of both New York City and state.
Whatever the case, a dangerous man was out on low bail, allegedly got into a gunfight, and killed a beloved Harlem neighborhood fixture.
Blame NY’s thug-loving progs for the death of innocent bystanders like ‘Momma Zee’ https://t.co/GPmIFR7yHp pic.twitter.com/YrEIbiOqgB
— NY Post Opinion (@NYPostOpinion) April 24, 2025
“They need to do something for the youth, to keep them occupied, give them something to do, something to look forward to,” said Barbara Johnson, a neighbor of “Momma Zee.” “Idle hands is the Devil’s workshop.”
Mayor Adams, meanwhile, blamed the system: “Public safety is a criminal justice apparatus that includes police, that includes judges, that includes lawmakers. The police are doing their job,” he said.
“When you have a person with repeated violence, just last year, he was arrested for robbery, stabbing two people. Now he’s back on the street, involved in a shooting that took the life of an innocent woman. We have to have the other parts of the criminal justice system do their job.”
Except … the judge in the case was re-appointed by Adams and doesn’t have a background that indicates a bleeding heart, so there goes that theory — unless, of course, he wants to put forth the notion that the man who really could have stood in the way of this happening was Alvin Bragg. Not only would that be politically disadvantageous for him, it’d also be almost certainly untrue.
Rather, the problem is the rotten system New York has assembled for itself. Elect all the Eric Adamses you want. Make sure they don’t have comped first-class tickets on red-eye from JFK to Istanbul, while you’re at it.
Or elect Andrew Cuomo — the leading Democratic candidate for New York City’s November mayoral race because, even though he killed a few thousand seniors with his COVID policies and sexually harassed numerous staffers, he’s not an insane lefty on crime like socialist state Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani or progressive New York City Comptroller Brad Lander, who promise a return to De Blasio-style governance and have the poll numbers to show for it.
This tragedy was set into motion long before Alvin Bragg or the Summer of Floyd. Rather, New York has made its progressive bed and is now lying in it, quite painfully. What’s sad is that the murder of “Momma Zee” isn’t the most hideous crime in NYC this month. That has to go to the man whose corpse was robbed twice and sexually assaulted aboard a New York subway train.
And let’s put the blame where the blame lies: This system and the politicians who created it were put into place by white laptop liberals because it made them feel enlightened. That’s true everywhere these failed policies are tried across this fruited plain, not just New York City. And now, the Democratic Party wonders aloud why black and Latino voters defected to Donald Trump in 2024 — with some estimating 25 percent of the black male vote going Republican. Look at these headlines, and you’re surprised it wasn’t more, especially when you look at who low or no bail really hurts.
I have no illusions that the political, legal, or social morass New York City and state have voted themselves into can be undone in an election, or even a decade. But we have to start somewhere. Start with “Momma Zee” and every Democrat who failed her.
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