One of the two men accused of shooting and killing a 7-month-old baby in Brooklyn earlier this month pleaded not guilty Tuesday to murder and other charges — hours after the baby's coffin was drawn in a white horse-and-buggy through the borough's streets as part of her funeral.
Mathew Rodriguez, 18, was arraigned in Brooklyn Supreme Court for the fatal shooting of Kaori Patterson-Moore, who prosecutors said was in a stroller with her parents and brother in East Williamsburg when she was struck. Prosecutors said Rodriguez was driving the moped from which the other defendant in the case, 21-year-old Amuri Greene, fired a gun, hitting Patterson-Moore and grazing her 2-year-old brother near Humboldt and Moore streets on the afternoon of April 1. Law enforcement officials said she was not the intended target, and she was pronounced dead at a nearby hospital after her father rushed her there.
Rodriguez is charged with acting in concert with Greene to cause Patterson-Moore’s death, and faces three counts of murder in the second degree, as well as attempted murder, assault, criminal use of a firearm, weapons possession and child endangerment charges. The 18-year-old is charged alone with tampering with evidence and hindering prosecution, the district attorney’s office said. If convicted on the top charges, he could receive life in prison.
As Assistant District Attorney Christopher Mirabella described how Patterson-Moore was shot, Rodriguez shook his head and exhaled deeply.
Mirabella said Rodriguez stated outside the courtroom “that he was the driver in this case, and didn’t know what his codefendant was going to do.” Judge Danny Chun ordered Rodriguez held without bail.
Mathew Rodriguez, 18, appears in Brooklyn court for his arraignment on April 14, 2026.
Authorities said that on Monday, Rodriguez was extradited to New York City from Pennsylvania, where he was arrested by NYPD detectives assigned to the U.S. Marshals Regional Fugitive Task Force after a massive manhunt. A grand jury indicted him and Greene last week.
Police said Rodriguez and Greene fled the shooting scene and crashed the moped into an oncoming car a few blocks away, leaving Greene with serious injuries. After the crash, according to prosecutors, Rodriguez picked up the gun and dropped Greene off at the New York City Housing Authority’s Marcy Houses in Bed-Stuy before abandoning the moped on the street and tampering with its license plate.
Greene was taken to the hospital and placed in custody after someone called 911 about the crash, officials said. He was arraigned from his hospital bed several days after the incident and pleaded not guilty to murder and weapons possession charges.
Outside the courtroom on Tuesday, DA Eric Gonzalez said he hopes the case will be a “catalyst for change in our communities” and his office will pursue more initiatives for young people.
“It’s heartbreaking that we’re burying a baby today,” he said. “We have failed our young people.”
On Tuesday morning, Patterson-Moore’s small pink casket was loaded into a glass horse-drawn carriage for a funeral procession starting at the Lafayette Gardens public housing complex, where she lived. Her mother, father and 2-year-old brother climbed into a black hearse behind the carriage as friends and community members watched tearfully.
“ I'm hurt, I'm scared for my own child. It's so much,” said neighbor Cierra Harrell, who clutched her 5-year-old daughter Torrence as they watched the casket go by. “She's been by my side all day, all night, like, ‘Mommy, you OK?’ Mommy's OK. Mommy's just worried about our future.”
Isaiah Greats, a friend of Patterson-Moore’s parents, said he hoped the procession would make people stop and think about the grim toll of the violence that took her life.
“That's not a normal size casket to be in there. So it's like you see that walk by, it's automatically going to catch your attention,” he said. “It’s just going to hit harder.”
On Monday evening, dozens of relatives, friends and community leaders paid their respects to Patterson-Moore at a funeral home in Bed-Stuy as her body lay in a pink outfit in the open coffin at the front of the room. Pink balloons and posters of Minnie Mouse flanked the setup, and many of the mourners wore pink in her honor.
Rah Jennings, a close family friend, said the baby’s family has been struggling to process her loss. He said Patterson-Moore’s brother, who is 2 years old and was grazed in the shooting, “just keeps saying, ‘the baby is sleeping.’”
Tanya Moronta, a neighbor from the building where Patterson-Moore’s father lives, brought four pink plastic chairs she said she had decorated for the girl’s mother, grandmothers and great-grandmother.
“These are Kaori’s heaven chairs,” Moronta said, noting one of them featured a light that would shine to remind the infant’s family of her. “She’s a star. And she should be here standing with us right now.”
Gonzalez was spotted walking into the funeral home. The Rev. Al Sharpton addressed the grieving family inside before coming out to speak briefly to reporters.
“If you can look at a coffin that doesn’t even need pallbearers and that doesn’t shake you in your heart and in your life, then something’s numb about you, and we cannot have a numb community,” Sharpton said. “We must turn this tragedy into a wake up call in our own community by really starting again, patrolling and talking to our young people.”
Greene is due before a judge on Wednesday, according to prosecutors and court records.
This story has been updated with additional information.
