Randolph Pierce lived more than two decades after being paralyzed from the waist down in a Brooklyn shooting at age 15 — and now city pathologists have deemed his painful death from cancer last year a homicide.
Pierce was 38 when he died on April 21, 2023, following a years-long struggle with skin and bone cancer that led doctors to amputate his left leg in a failed attempt to save his life.
But it was the bullet that rested near Pierce’s spine ever since the unsolved 2000 Brownsville shooting that led the city Medical Examiner to rule his death a homicide.
“The medical examiner said if Randy didn’t get shot he wouldn’t have gotten cancer,” his 30-year-old sister Jahnyia Land told the Daily News last week.
Pierce struggled for years to come to terms with the shame he felt at his inability to walk after being shot as a boy, isolating himself from the outside world and contemplating suicide.
“He didn’t want to be around people. He didn’t want them to see him in the chair,” Land said. “He didn’t want to be alive at some points.”
But Pierce went on to have a daughter, now 14, and he eventually came to terms with his paralysis.
“With the love from his family members he started adjusting to the chair and feeling comfortable,” said Land.
An autopsy concluded in April that Pierce died from “complications of paraplegia due to spinal cord injury” caused by the shooting.
Those complications took the form of festering bedsores after Pierce lost the use of his legs, which in turn produced the deadly cancer that killed him, according to his sister.
Pierce was outside his family’s home in NYCHA’s Tilden Houses when shots rang out on Livonia Ave. near Rockaway Ave. about 9 p.m. Feb. 25, 2000, according to police.
Pierce shoved a friend out of the bullets’ path only to be struck by three rounds himself, including the one that pierced his back and left him paralyzed, according to his sister.
“He managed to push his friend,” said Land. “He saved his friend.”
Land described the shooting as a case of mistaken identity.
But spending his life either sitting in a chair or lying in bed led to sores developing on his buttocks. They never healed and were prone to infection and in 2017 they turned cancerous, according to Land.
“The sores would get too deep in so basically they never closed,” said Land. “They were treating it and it turned into skin cancer and progressively got worse and worse.”
Pierce was undergoing surgery on Jan. 27 of last year when his mother, Tonya McCrae, succumbed to heart failure at the age of 56. He became despondent when Land informed him of their mother’s death.
“He wanted to go then,” said Land. “He didn’t want to live after he found out our mom passed.”
Pierce’s condition continued to deteriorate and in less than three months he was saying his final goodbyes to his friends, family and his beloved daughter.
“The day before he passed (his daughter) spoke to him,” said Land. “She expressed her feelings about how much she loved him and to be strong. But his time was there.”
A neighbor of Pierce’s first met him about five years after the shooting.
“Randy was always laughing,” said 43-year-old Jasmine Rosario. “He had the biggest smile. He always was so positive.”
Rosario missed a call from Pierce the day before his death and says she’ll always regret not saying goodbye to her friend. She continues to post loving messages on Pierce’s Facebook page.
“Just because he passed away doesn’t mean I’m going to forget about my friend,” Rosario said. “He was a major part of my life. When I was going through stuff in life he was there for me.”
Now Pierce’s loved ones are hopeful the homicide ruling may spur police to finally make an arrest in the decades-old shooting.
“We’re angry at the fact that somebody has now killed our brother,” said Land. “There’s no justice, there’s no nothing. You’re just left with open wounds and no closure.”
