The mom of slain New York City teenager D’aja Robinson “knew” her daughter’s accused killer would wind up back behind bars after his conviction was tossed nine months ago.
She was right.
“He did it again,” Shadia Sands told The Post on Wednesday following ex-con Shamel Capers’ arrest for his alleged role in a Queens shootout that left a 19-year-old man dead last year.
“It’s giving me chills all over again,” Sands said in a phone interview. “He did this to somebody else.”
Sands recalled how, after Queens prosecutors pushed to clear Capers of her 14-year-old daughter’s murder, leaving him back on the streets, “We said these exact words: ‘He’s gonna be out there doing this to somebody else’s child.’
“And he did it again,” she said.
Capers, now 25, was found guilty in 2016 in D’aja’s shooting death three years earlier.
The teen was hit by a stray bullet while she rode a Q6 bus in Jamaica after a Sweet 16 birthday party.
“Me seeing him in the papers and now seeing my daughter again, it’s like I’m reliving it all over again — from the same person,” Sands said.
The Queens District Attorney’s Office moved to throw out Capers’ conviction in November 2022 after his lawyers said a witness in the case lied about Capers’ involvement.
Sands, who had since moved out of the Empire State, said she was blindsided.
“The advocate of the DA’s office called me and said, ‘He’s gonna be exonerated tomorrow.’ I said, ‘Wait a minute. Hold up. Exoneration means he had absolutely nothing to do with this. ‘His hands wasn’t in this pot,’” she told The Post.
Sands said she still believes Capers was allegedly involved in her daughter’s slaying.
Before the DA’s Conviction Integrity Unit took up a review of his case, prosecutors had said he and a second man, Kevin McClinton, took turns firing shots at the bus D’aja was riding in, killing her.
“I watched the video. I saw him on camera, he was there. Everyone pointed him out,” Sands recalled. “I said, ‘I’m confused. What do you mean exonerated?’ No one told me until the day before he got exonerated.”
Once freed, Capers, a dad who now lives in Brooklyn, was back in the streets — and allegedly armed.
On July 23, 2023, prosecutors said Capers was part of a rowdy group out on the streets in Middle Village shortly before 3:30 a.m. when a shootout ensued, killing 19-year-old Joshua Taylor.
Prosecutors said Capers, who was arrested in New Jersey last week and extradited to the Big Apple, didn’t fire the fatal shot. He was charged with attempted murder and remanded into custody at his arraignment.
Alleged gunman Dante Hunter, 25, is facing murder charges, while a third suspect, 21-year-old Damone Miller, was also charged with attempted murder this week.
In a statement Tuesday, Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz defended the decision to throw out Capers’ 2016 murder conviction, saying the decision followed “an exhaustive investigation.”
Katz said that “newly discovered evidence led us to conclude that Shamel Capers had been wrongfully convicted. The court agreed and the conviction was vacated.”
But Sands said her family were never given a chance to speak about the decision.
The grieving mom said both Capers and McClinton fired shots from the same gun that killed D’aja, and she wonders how prosecutors could determine whose shot killed her daughter.
Regardless, she said she will always have to live with the pain of losing D’aja.
“They’re portraying [Capers] as this great dad that’s missing out on his kids’ life,” Sands said. “My child was a great kid and I’m missing out on her growing up and having a career, going on with life. And she didn’t do anything wrong.
“So, what he’s missing out, he put himself into that.”
