Hooded gunman shoots 15-year-old boy dead in front of sister in New York
Samuel Joseph shot in face and chest in doorway of Brooklyn home before he died at nearby hospital
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Your support makes all the difference.A 15-year-old boy from Haiti was shot and killed in front of his sister by a hooded gunman in the latest killing in an increasingly violent year in New York.
Samuel Joseph was a second-year student at the High School for Youth and Community Development and one of eight siblings from a family of Haitian immigrants.
He was leaving his apartment building in Brooklyn to get something to eat at around 5.45pm on Friday when he was confronted in the lobby by the gunman.
He was shot in the face, head and chest, and died at a nearby hospital, the police said.
His killing was the latest in an increasingly violent year in New York City, and Brooklyn in particular. As of 17 February, there had been 48 homicides in the city this year, up from 31 during the same period in 2018.
That increase has been driven mostly by killings in Brooklyn, where there have been at least 15 more homicides compared with this point last year.
Surveillance video recovered by the police from nearby businesses showed two young men stopping and speaking to one of Samuel’s sisters in front of their building, Assemblymember Rodneyse Bichotte said on Saturday.
“His sister was walking down the street, and you can see these two men have a conversation with her and apparently asked where her brother was,” said Ms Bichotte, who had spoken to one of Samuel’s sisters and watched the video.
“One guy stood outside, and one came inside, did the shooting and left.”
No arrests have been made and a motive for the shooting was not immediately clear.
“This was planned, but I don’t know if it was the right target,” Ms Bichotte said.
The shooting happened on a busy Friday evening when the neighbouring businesses – a barbershop, a tattoo parlour, a package shipping centre – were full of customers.
Fabian Mora, a tattoo artist who works two doors down from Samuel’s building, said that for the past few years Samuel would come into his shop and watch people get tattooed.
“He used to joke with us and say, ‘I want to get a tattoo,’ and we would tell him he was too young,” Mr Mora said.
Frank Joseph, who played basketball with Samuel at the YMCA gym just steps down the street, crouched in front of a sidewalk memorial of candles and a note-laden poster of his friend. He remembered him as a skilled point guard.
“I knew him before he could even speak English,” said Joseph, who was not related to the victim. “He was a good kid.”
A number of youth homicides have stunned the city recently, notably the brutal stabbing of Lesandro Guzman-Feliz in the Bronx last summer and the shooting of Oluwadurotimi Joseph Oyebola on a Brooklyn basketball court in September.
Samuel’s family – he was one of five sons and three daughters – came to the US about 10 years ago. Relatives were too distraught to speak to reporters on Saturday.
“They came here for opportunity, and a young man was gunned down,” Ms Bichotte, the Assemblymember, said. “You have a family that’s trying to capture the American dream, and then something like this happens.”
New York Times
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