Woman Gunned down Lover , Light the Body on Fire in front of her kids: Cops

Nailed her.

A Queens woman sporting nine fake fingernails told cops she wasn’t with her boyfriend when he was shot to death in his left side early Saturday. But the lie fell apart — leading to her arrest Monday — when a sharp-eyed detective noticed her one naked digit.

“On his body we find a fingernail and we noticed that when we talk to his girlfriend she’s missing a fingernail,” Chief of Detectives Robert Boyce said. “We take her back into custody, we start speaking to her, and she makes admissions she actually killed him.”

After the murder, police say Dawn McIntosh, 46, of Long Island City, enlisted the help of her son and daughter to carry Sh-Ron McWhorter’s body to a car. He was too heavy, so McIntosh tried to burn the victim’s body to mask the crime. The mom was charged with murder, criminal possession of a weapon and tampering with physical evidence.

Firefighters doused the blaze, but the 43-year-old Brooklyn man couldn’t be saved. Police identified McWhorter by the “Sugar Sha” tattoo on his left arm, sources said.

McWhorter’s heartbroken mom called McIntosh “a stalker” and said her son wanted nothing to do with the accused killer. Wiping away tears, she said she turned 67 on Monday and her son always remembered her birthday.

“I didn’t get that call from him saying, ‘Happy Birthday,’” Barbara McWhorter said.

Channell Barber, mother of the victim’s 16-year-old son, Donte, identified the charred remains over the weekend.

“When I went to identify the body, I was hoping it wasn’t him,” Barber said.

The chain of events that ended with McIntosh’s arrest began early Saturday when the couple began arguing about his alleged infidelity at a Long Island City residence on 14th St., police said.

“She shoots him twice,” Boyce said. “She put lighter fluid on him and then started the fire.”

Firefighters responding to a 911 call found McWhorter’s body ablaze at 7 a.m. Saturday behind the home.

McIntosh, at first, insisted that she hadn’t seen her boyfriend and that he had stood her up, Boyce said. Then detectives noticed she was missing the fingernail. Trapped, McIntosh told cops that after the killing, she called her son Donte Watkins, 21, and her 15-year-old daughter to help get rid of the body, sources said.

But McWhorter was too heavy for Watkins to lift into the victim’s Jeep, the sources said. So as her kids looked on, McIntosh set the body on fire.

Watkins was later charged with tampering with evidence. His sister was not charged with a crime.

McIntosh, who lives in the Astoria Houses less than a mile from where her beau’s burning body was found, has two prior arrests on her rap sheet but the records are sealed.

A neighbor found it hard to believe McIntosh was involved with McWhorter.

“He was a street guy,” said the neighbor, who asked not to be identified. “Something just doesn’t add up.”

McWhorter’s rap sheet lists 28 arrests, 18 of them drug offenses in Brooklyn. He was busted for a criminal sex act in 2003. And records show McWhorter was named in four domestic violence reports filed by another woman in 2007 and 2008.

There have been 222 murders in the city this year through Sunday — an 8.3% increase over the same time period last year when there were 205. The number of people who have been shot this year is up by less than a percentage point. Serious crime is down 4% citywide.