Teen playing basketball shot dead
SHOCKING SLAY ON QUEENS COURT
A 14-year-old Queens boy was shot to death Saturday on the basketball court of a NYCHA project in South Jamaica, police said.
Cops responded around 8 p.m. to the court behind 116-80 Guy R. Brewer Blvd. in the Baisley Park Houses and found the youth, identified by neighbors and friends as Amir Griffin, with a gunshot wound to his neck.
A woman who lives in the project and declined to give her name heard gunfire. “It’s always something. I just hoped it was firecrackers,” she said.
“I looked out the window, and I saw that kid lying on the ground,” she said. “I saw the cops pumping his chest from my window.”
An EMS crew rushed Amir to Jamaica Hospital, where he was declared dead.
Cops quickly apprehended a person of interest in the shooting, said police sources. It was possible the person taken into custody was involved in other shootings, said the sources.
Those who knew Amir mourned him Saturday night.
“He had just started high school,” said a second neighborhood resident, who didn’t give her name. “He’s always playing basketball out here. I don’t see how anyone would want to harm him.” Basketball was Amir’s life, said Larry Jervis, his mother’s boyfriend of three years.
“He’s a great kid,” Jervis said. “All he does is play basketball. He’s up at 7 a.m., playing basketball.” Amir dreamed of playing in the NBA. “He told his mom he was going to buy her a car and a house,” Jervis said. He was looking forward to playing on the team at Benjamin Cardozo High School in Bayside.
“Kid never misses a day of school,” Jervis said. Amir has an older sister.
His family calls him “Buddy.” He obeyed a strict curfew, said Jervis.
“By 9 o’clock he has to be in the house,” he said. “Never late. Some kids, they stray away. Kids, they rebel …. He wasn’t anything like that.”
Amir was playing with friends when he was shot, Jervis said. The court is lit at night.
A woman who lives across the hall from Amir said she never knew him to get into trouble.
“He was a good kid, just a young, good kid … I’ve seen him with a trophy,” this neighbor said.
“His mom is really, really, really nice. She loves him. She’s just real good with kids.”
The slaying remained under investigation late Saturday.