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12-year-old shoots his sister with gun used in slay: Source

By Rich Bockmann

Police were still looking for the killer of an IT worker who was slain walking home from work last week in South Jamaica after a 12-year-old boy accidentally shot his sister a few days later with a gun a source said was identified as the murder weapon.

Investigators were trying to find out how a young boy in Jamaica got his hands on the Colt .22 handgun that had been used to kill Mohamed Hamwi, 48, as he was walking from the Long Island Rail Road station to his home on 105th Avenue just after midnight March 11, a source said.

Just three days later the 12-year-old was playing with the gun inside his home on 164th Street when the revolver accidentally went off, hitting his 14-year-old sister in the abdomen, police said.

The teenage girl was taken to Jamaica Hospital in stable condition, and after he was questioned at the 103rd Precinct the boy was charged in Queens Family Court Tuesday with weapons possession and assault.

Police said they were still working to find out who used the weapon to kill Hamwi in what they think was a botched robbery.

The IT worker was making his way home later than usual and decided to walk home from the train station rather than wait for a bus, according to Zona Tomlinson, his mother-in-law.

He was just around the corner from the house where he lived with his husband and mother-in-law when he was shot once in the face and midsection, police said.

He was taken to Queens Hospital Center, where he was pronounced dead.

Tomlinson said he still had his iPhone and his wallet with about $200 in cash on him.

Hamwi, a Syrian Muslim, had lived in Canada before moving to the United States, and Tomlinson said he was still supporting his mother in the Middle East.

Reach reporter Rich Bockmann by e-mail at rbockmann@cnglocal.com or by phone at 718-260-4574.