Family of aspiring model Imani Sharpless pray as doctors must wait to perform surgery on bullet to head, uncle says

Family of an aspiring model shot in the head following a weekend argument over parking at a Brooklyn Home Depot are praying she pulls through as doctors are forced to wait to perform surgery.

The bullet remained lodged 26-year-old Imani Sharpless’ head as on Monday evening, and intense swelling around the wound has to subside before an operation can happen, according to a relative.

“They can’t take the bullet out until the swelling goes down in the brain,” uncle Patrick Sharpless said as the victim remained in critical condition since Saturday’s senseless shooting.

“We can’t do nothing but pray,” he told the Daily News. “God is taking care of her.”

Sharpless’s uncle, a North Carolina pastor who’s been in close contact with her immediate family, said that doctors are unsure whether his niece’s wounds will result in lasting paralysis.

“We just have to make sure she’s not paralyzed or anything like that,” he said.

Imani Sharpless was riding shotgun in 36-year-old boyfriend Cordel McDuffie’s white Hyundai Sonata at the Bedford-Stuyvesant Home Depot on the corner of Dekalb and Nostrand Aves. shortly after noon when the couple started feuding with another man over a parking spot, McDuffie told ABC7 New York.

“He was trying to go into a space, I pulled up behind the guy, he had to back up and I was impeding on him trying to back up,” McDuffie said. “I didn’t realize it, I blew my horn and we exchanged words.”

Witnesses previously told The News they overheard McDuffie shouting that he had given up the disputed parking spot, only for the gunman to pull up beside the pair and unleash a hail of gunfire.

“The guy pulls on the side of them, he starts shooting at them,” said Stacee Glenn, 40, adding that McDuffie shouted, “I gave him the parking spot!” following the shooting.

Although he suffered gunshot wounds to the back and knee, McDuffie managed to maneuver his Hyundai out of the Home Depot parking lot, racing to the intersection of Nostrand and Myrtle Aves. a few blocks away before pulling over and pleading for help, according to witnesses.

Sharpless had been shot multiple times, including once in the head, and witnesses saw her slumped over and unconscious in the passenger seat.

“I look in the car and there’s blood dripping from her head,” said Yadelyn Pena, 14, who was at a Nostrand Ave. Duane Reade when a bloodied McDuffie pulled up beside her. “I saw her.”

Police confirmed that a Mercedes-Benz SUV spotted in the Home Depot parking lot with a Pennywise clown mask draped over the headrest of the front passenger seat is believed to belong to the shooter.

The gunman hightailed it down Nostrand Ave. following the shooting, where he was spotted sprinting south wearing a white shirt and red hat, according to police.

McDuffie said he was crestfallen that the tiff over a parking spot ballooned into an act of senseless violence.

“She’s one of the most beautiful people, she loves kids, full of life, just a good person,” he told ABC 7. “For this to be happening over something so minuscule — it’s overwhelming.”

Sharpless was attending school in the hopes of becoming a model and singer, according to her uncle.

She works as a teacher’s aide at an after-school program at a Brownsville elementary school, her friend Dandre Mckoy told The News.

A neighbor of McDuffie’s said he and Sharpless had been seeing each other for years and she believed the couple had been preparing to move in together prior to Saturday’s senseless shooting.

“They’ve been fixing up the apartment lately,” said the neighbor. “I see her coming in with him all the time.”