(Newser)
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It was a shooting that made waves: A Los Angeles man visiting New York was gunned down in broad daylight on a busy Midtown Manhattan street Monday. Police are piecing together a portrait of the victim and the crime, and the picture that's emerging is a complex one. The latest, per the New York Post and New York Times:
- The victim, Brandon Lincoln Woodard, 31, was known as a club promoter who liked to party and who had 20 arrests on his record, some of them drug-related ... but he also happened to be in law school at the University of West Los Angeles, and had an upcoming final.
- He flew to NYC on a one-way ticket Sunday, and reportedly planned to fly back to LA on Monday; he had asked his mother to pick him up from the airport at 8pm ET ... but he left his bag at the front desk when he exited the hotel just after 1pm, apparently intending to return.
- Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly says Woodard had three phones with him; one in his bag and two on him.
- Hours before his death, Woodard "looked scared and afraid of something" while eating breakfast at a nearby diner, the cashier recalls. "He was always looking over his shoulder" while eating.
- Surveillance video shows the killer waited for him for 20 minutes outside his hotel. When Woodard finally exited, he appears to have looked at the hooded shooter before turning around and continuing to text. The assailant shot him in the head from close behind before being whisked away by a getaway driver.
- Kelly says it's possible Woodard was lured out of his hotel.
- Police don't think the couple who rented the getaway car were involved, though they may have loaned the car to someone who was.
- The gun had also been used in an unsolved 2009 shooting in Queens.
