A Bensonhurst street was awash in candlelight last week as mourners remembered a young mother murdered during a brazen early-morning heist.
About a dozen neighbors, friends and family members lit candles outside 2468 85th Street to remember Jessica Enger Wednesday night – roughly a week after a masked gunman shot her to death.
As of this writing, Enger’s killer was still being sought by authorities.
The thief reportedly snuck into the apartment that Enger was sharing with a friend and then forced both women to an upstairs neighbor’s apartment.
Waking the upstairs neighbor, a neighborhood pizzeria owner, the gunman threatened to shoot one of the two women if he didn’t hand over the money he knew was hidden somewhere in the apartment.
In the moments that followed, one shot was fired. Enger, the doting mother of a six-year-old boy, was shot in the arm and chest. She died of her injuries at Lutheran Medical Center.
During the somber vigil, friends and family members remembered the plucky young woman who was working two jobs to raise enough money to get an apartment for her and her son Nicholas, who was reportedly staying with her grandmother on the night of her death.
Friends said that Enger grew up in New Jersey, where she was a member of the St. Jude Church cheerleading team.
Her singular look and striking smile led the Hpatcong High School graduate to the Miss Hopatcong Pageant in 1995, where she was named first runner-up, friends remembered.
After high school, Enger spent time in the borough, but then went down to Florida for beautician school.
Friends said that she returned to Brooklyn just two months before her death. When she was killed, she was working as an esthetician at 212 Spa in Manhattan and as an office manager at Champion Combustion on 17th Avenue in Bensonhurst.
On the morning of the vigil, family members once again returned to St. Jude Church, this time for Jessica’s funeral.
“Jess was a beautiful woman, a great daughter and a great mom,” Alfred Enger, Jr., Jessica’s father, told the New Jersey Daily Record. “She loved the big city and moved there after she graduated and she couldn’t wait to go back.”
“Nothing will be the same again,” he said. “Things that used to be important just ain’t. We just want to find her killer.”
Cops are asking anyone with information regarding last week’s slaying to come forward.
Calls can be made to either the 62nd Precinct at (718) 236-2611 or the NYPD CrimeStoppers hotline at (800) 577-TIPS. All calls will be kept confidential.
