‘Our Family is Completely Destroyed’

WILLIAMSBURG — As the family of Daniel Enriquez, the Park Slope man whose shooting death aboard a subway train shocked the city, gathered for his funeral on May 31, his sister vowed to honor his memory by fighting to stop escalating gun violence in New York City.

“I want to use my voice to raise the real concerns of safety and gun violence,” Griselda Vile told The Tablet in an interview before the funeral. “I want to be part of the national movement to prevent and minimize gun violence. And I want to take back the city that we love and make it safe and make it a better city for our children and also for the future.”

In her quest, Vile, 43, said she will draw inspiration from her late brother.

“We have to go on. One thing my brother always, always said to me, ‘Fear can make you weak and it can steal so much of you,’ ” she explained.

Vile called the day of her brother’s murder, May 22, “one of the hardest days of my life.”

What keeps her going, she said, is her deep Catholic faith. “My entire childhood. We grew up reading the Bible praying in the morning, praying at night meditation,” she recalled. 

Part of what also keeps her going is her desire to pay tribute to her brother’s life in a meaningful way.

“He was always my hero,” she said.

Enriquez, 48, was laid to rest following a funeral Mass at the Church of the Transfiguration in Williamsburg on May 31 as members of his grieving family expressed anger and frustration over the city’s persistent rise in violent crime.