By Shantell E. Jamison From JETMag

Tiarah Poyah was shot and killed at the J’ouvert Caribbean pride festival in Brooklyn…

A 22-year-old college student lost her life after attending the J’Ouvert Caribbean pride celebration in New York, officials say.

Tiarah Poyau, a St. John’s University student, was killed after she was shot in the face in Brooklyn’s Crown Heights area.

Roughly four hours after Poyau was gunned down at the annual predawn J’Ouvert festival — a large Caribbean street party held prior to the official start of the Brooklyn Carnival parade — police said they unknowingly arrested the man who allegedly committed the crime.

Regenald Moise, 20, has been charged with second-degree murder, criminal possession of a weapon, and reckless endangerment in connection with Poyah’s death, CBS New York reports. NYPD Chief of Detectives Robert Boyce said Moise was arrested on allegations of driving while intoxicated and crashing into three cars.

“So he’s arrested for the DWI. When they pull him out of the car, his hand is cut up and is tied off with a Caribbean flag,” Boyce said. “It all starts to fit together.”

Officials say around 4:15 a.m., Moise opened fire on a crowd celebrating J’Ouvert. One bullet struck Poyau in the head. Police say Moise then went to an apartment building on Montgomery Avenue, where a girlfriend allegedly agreed to hide his gun.

“At this point, he fires two rounds into the wall, and then he breaks a window — I’m sorry, a mirror — and he cuts his hand, and there’s blood on the mirror,” Boyce said.

Moise then left his gun at the apartment, where officials recovered it. Investigators also reportedly found a rare 9mm aluminum shell casing. The casing was the same type they recovered at the shooting scene.

“We then talk to his friends and they tell, one of the individuals he spoke to said, ‘I think I shot somebody on the parade ground, and I didn’t know the gun was loaded,” Boyce said. “We then begin to speak to him, where he goes on to state that he thinks he shot somebody: ‘The gun went off. I thought it was loaded. I’m not sure.’”

At least three others suffered injuries in separate incidents Monday, including a woman who was stabbed and a man who was shot in the leg in locations not far from the scene of the first shooting.

Mayor Bill de Blasio said the annual celebration will continue despite these violent incidents. This year, the NYPD doubled the amount of officers on the street and increased the number of floodlights from 40 to 200.

For more on this story go to: http://www.jetmag.com/news/woman-dies-jouvert-shooting/#ixzz4JfSWvCZT

Related story:

Police make arrest in fatal shooting at Caribbean carnival

Associated Press From News Sentinel

NEW YORK (AP) — A man has been arrested in one of two fatal shootings that cast a pall over a carnival celebrating the city’s Caribbean communities, police announced Tuesday.

Regenald Moise implicated himself in the shooting of 22-year-old Tiarah Poyau before dawn Monday during the Brooklyn street festival known as J’ouvert, police Chief of Detectives Robert Boyce said.

Boyce said Moise told an acquaintance, “I think I shot somebody on the parade route. I didn’t know the gun was loaded.”

Boyce said Poyau, who was shot in the head, was a student at St. John’s University and was “a stellar person.”

Moise was arrested on charges of murder, criminal possession of a weapon and reckless endangerment. He was in custody, and no information on an attorney for him was available.

Police have not made an arrest in the fatal shooting of 17-year-old Tyreke Borel about half an hour before Poyau’s shooting.

Borel and Poyau were killed despite a stepped-up police presence after a lawyer with the administration of Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo was fatally shot at last year’s J’ouvert celebration.

Democratic Mayor Bill de Blasio said that despite the violence city officials are not considering canceling J’ouvert, a celebration that takes place in the pre-dawn hours every Labor Day before the larger West Indian Day Parade kicks off.

“J’ouvert will continue,” said de Blasio, who joined police officials at a news conference. “It’s an event that’s very important to the community. … But we’re going to look at every conceivable way to make it safer.”

J’ouvert brings an estimated 250,000 people to the streets, while the West Indian parade attracts more than 1 million. No shootings or stabbings were reported at the larger parade Monday.

De Blasio said the West Indian parade and two of the city’s other massive annual gatherings, the St. Patrick’s Day Parade and the Puerto Rican Day Parade, have all been marred by violence and disorder in the past but each one of them was brought under control.

“We’ll do the same here with J’ouvert,” he promised.

IMAGE: Crime scene investigators with the New York Police Department work at the scene where multiple people were killed and others injured in a shooting during J’ouvert festivities in the Brooklyn borough of New York on Monday, Sept. 5, 2016. (AP Photo/Craig Ruttle)

For more on this story go to: http://www.news-sentinel.com/news/us-and-world/Police-make-arrest-in-fatal-shooting-at-Caribbean-carnival