A teenage boy gunned down in SoHo on Tuesday afternoon near his high school loved basketball and commuted roughly two hours each day to and from his home in East Flatbush so he could advance his education, his close friends and family said.in the head and thigh around 2:30 p.m. at an outdoor plaza on Spring Street near Varick Street, according to police. He was just a couple of blocks from Broome Street Academy Charter High School, where he attended miles from his Brooklyn neighborhood.
Police said the shooting stemmed from a fight among teenagers around school dismissal time, and were looking for two suspects who fled the scene. One was riding a Citi Bike around the time of the incident, NYPD officials said. It was not immediately clear if the suspects were also students at a nearby school. No arrests have been announced.
Brown was a basketball lover who participated in tournaments every summer and was very close with his mother, according to their neighbors. Jenkins lamented the particular gravity of the loss less than a week before Mother’s Day.“I’m not going to see Mahki outside trying to get his change together for a card,” shesaid, adding that Brown had given his mother a bag filled with gifts on Valentine’s Day. “He wasn’t a bad kid.
Fatal shootings are rare in the First Police Precinct, which includes SoHo, Tribeca and Wall Street. There were no shootings at all in the precinct in 2023, according to data from the NYPD.