Teen shot dead in Brooklyn after Nets game; third Crown Heights slaying in a week
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A 13-year-old boy heading home from a Brooklyn Nets game was shot dead in Crown Heights in the third homicide to take place in the Brooklyn neighborhood this week, police said.
The shooting happened 10:40 p.m. Thursday when someone opened fire at Troy Gill, hitting him in the chest and arm at the corner of New York and Bergen avenues.
The teen managed to run about two blocks before collapsing on the street. Medics rushed him to Kings County Hospital, but he could not be saved.
Police believe Troy was running home, which was a half-mile away on St. Mark’s Ave. near Albany Ave., when he collapsed..
Troy’s friends and family were too distraught to talk about his murder Friday.
“This just happened,” one woman at the teen’s home said. “The family is in shock.”
Cops recovered six shell casings at the scene and on Friday were continuing to scour the area for surveillance video that could help them identify the shooter.
Troy, a student at MS 354, had gone to Barclays Center to watch the Nets beat the Hawks, cops were told. He was apparently alone when he was shot.
Teachers and classmates at his school were shocked over the shooting.
“He was a good kid,” said Prince Meyers, 11, a sixth grader. “He was kind and he talked a lot. He was in the seventh grade. He loved basketball. We played together right here in the park. It’s sad. He didn’t deserve this.”
Another classmate, Gianni Egglestone, 12, a seventh grader, said she was trading messages with Troy on Snapchat not long before he was killed.
“Troy was such a good kid.” she said. “He wasn’t part of that gang stuff. He posted on Snapchat last night that he was coming home from the basketball game. He said ‘I’m chilling, just trying to get home.’ He said he was enjoying himself. It’s sad.”
Troy’s mother told cops she didn’t know that he went to the game until he FaceTimed her from the arena around 9 p.m., authorities said. He Facetimed her again about an hour later from an Uber, according to cops.
He called her again at 10:36 p.m., and told her that he had been shot, and was running toward the Brooklyn Children’s Museum.
Cops found him on Brooklyn Avenue, about a half-block away.
All the killings in Crown Heights this week happened within a two-mile area.
On Monday afternoon, a gunman in a black-and-white varsity jacket shot bodega worker Nazim Berry in the head over a $2 cigarillo, according to police and family of the victim.
The suspect was at the Amin Deli at Franklin Ave. and Lincoln Place when he asked for a Black & Mild for free, cops were told. When Berry, 36, said no, the man left, but returned with a handgun and shot the bodega worker in cold blood.
On Wednesday, a gunman opened fire on a group of men near the corner of McKeever Place and Sullivan Place, hitting Lamine Bah, a 33-year-old father of three who friends said worked seven days a week to support his family.
“I cannot explain to you how good he was,” the victim’s cousin Amadou Bah, 38, told the Daily News on Thursday. “He’s the eldest in the family. Everything, everything — he would do everything. It’s a big, big, big, big loss for the family.”
No arrests have been made in either case.
This week’s violence has doubled the number of killings in 2023 in the NYPD’s 71st and 77th precincts, which cover different parts of Crown Heights.
As of last Sunday, only three homicides had occurred in the two commands, cops said. Just one had taken place in either precinct as of this time last year.
