New York Daily News writer, Michael Daly, penned this piece about Nicole Sutton, the Brooklyn woman on Wyckoff Street, who was killed by a stray bullet. Her baby managed to survive the assault and was delivered by C-section after the mother’s death.

By yesterday morning, the blood had dried to a dark maroon on the pavement and somebody had tied two red fabric roses to the black metal bench on Wyckoff St.

This was where 33-year-old Nicole Sutton was sitting Friday night, escaping the heat that must have been a particular torment to a woman some six months pregnant.

The place on the bench was her usual spot and as always she had her radio. She was listening to her favorite singer, Mary J. Blige when Joshua Brown came down from watching a movie in the 20th-floor apartment where she lived with her boyfriend.

"She had a blue skirt on, blue shirt," Brown would recall.

Brown had been unable to lock the apartment door when he left and Sutton gave him her key. He rushed back upstairs to lock the door.

"Before somebody comes in the house," Brown would later say. "That’s how easy it is for things to happen around here."

Brown then returned to where Sutton still sat in her spot outside the 21-story apartment building, beneath a tall tree whose shade was turning to shadows with the very last light of the day.

Brown would remember the touch of her hand as he returned the key. He continued on his way six minutes before the official time recorded for sunset.

"Eight fifteen; that’s exactly what time it was the last time I saw her," Brown would say.

Sutton remained in her spot as the darkness deepened, listening to the radio. Had she dialed to one of the all news stations, she would have heard reports of the fugitive bombers in London. One of the suspects had fled the scene in a sweatshirt emblazoned with the site of the mother of all suicide attacks.

"New York."

From the back window up in the 20th-floor apartment, there was a panoramic view the Statue of Liberty and the harbor and the void where the World Trade Center once stood. The man in the apartment directly above on the 21st floor, George Sickles, had watched the plane fly into the second tower.

But, Sutton was sitting down on the bench, listening not to news, but to music, a new life stirring inside her. Brown would say she was especially excited about the baby because she had suffered a miscarriage some time ago.

Then, shortly before 1 a.m., gunshots signaled an eruption of the day-to-day domestic terror that once ruled much of this city. Nobody could have felt more terrorized than this Brooklyn mother-to-be as bullets tore through the night.

Sutton’s one, all eclipsing thought must have been her unborn child. Her overriding impulse no doubt would have been to take cover, but she would likely not have been agile enough to simply pitch sideways and roll to the ground.

Sutton first had to rise and as she did she was struck in the neck by a stray round. She pitched forward, the blood that had been nourishing her unborn child pouring onto the pavement rich, dark and suddenly obscene.

"My baby!" a woman’s voice was heard to cry. "My baby!"

The police and the paramedics arrived. Sutton was rushed to Long Island College Hospital, where a trauma team fought to save her life. She had been pronounced dead when her child was delivered by Cesarean section. The baby remained a bright spark of life as the sun rose on the crime scene.

In the late morning, Brown got word of the shooting and walked up to where he had last seen Sutton. A piece of knotted yellow crime scene tape was still tied to the bench and somebody had added the two fabric red roses. Her blood was still on the pavement and there were footprints from the people who had walked through it.

"Every day, listening to her music right in that spot right there," Brown said. "You go over there, you can smell her scent."

He remembered giving her back her key just five hours before the shooting.

"I just touched her hand yesterday and the next day you’re gone," he said.

He was as amazed as everybody else to hear that the baby had survived.

"Oh, that’s beautiful, man," he said.

As his shock began to distill into tears, he recalled how badly Sutton had wanted to have this child whose birth defied death.

"God must have wanted it to happen," he said. "It must have been a blessing.