25 years for ‘monster’
Victim’s family bashes killer for stray-bullet killing in Bronx
A gunman behind a stray bullet that killed a budding college basketball star in the Bronx was sentenced on Friday to 25 years in prison, as the victim’s heartbroken family called him “a monster” who made the wrong choice.
Just two days after he graduated from high school in 2020, Brandon Hendricks, 17, was killed by a stray bullet on a Bronx street. Prosecutors said Najhim Luke, 26, shot into a crowd of people at a Davidson Ave. cookout on June 28, killing Hendricks.
“Najhim Luke, you’re a monster. I hate you,” said Brandon’s mother, Eve Hendricks, as she stared down her son’s killer in Bronx Criminal court. “You will be remembered as the lowest piece of s--t. My son will be remembered as a legend.”
Hendricks, who graduated from Metropolitan Soundview High School, planned to major in English literature and sports management at St. John’s University in Queens, where he was preparing to play point guard as a walk-on.
He died just days short of his 18th birthday.
Hendricks’ uncle, Noel Ellison, said Brandon called to hit him up for some cash before he headed to the barbecue. Later that night, Ellison found himself on the way to the hospital.
“I expected him to be alive,” Ellison said.
Instead, he was informed by a nurse shortly upon arriving that his nephew was dead.
He said the family raised Brandon to stay away from gangs and guns and focus on constructive pursuits.
“We thought we had the formula,” Ellison said.
But what the family couldn’t control, he said, were the actions of other people.
“This gentleman owes our family a debt that he will never, ever be able to repay,” Ellison said.
Ellison and Hendricks said they were filling the holes in their hearts with community work they are performing, raising money for scholarships and food pantries in Brandon’s name.
Hendricks spoke about making choices, a theme echoed by prosecutors, Bronx DA Darcel Clark and Judge Steven Hornstein.
“Carrying an illegal firearm places the lives of every man, woman and child in the Bronx at risk,” Hornstein said. His choices were calculated, premeditated and lethal.”
Clark said Brandon’s survivors have choices, too. She said they have chosen to uplift the neighborhood where Brandon lived instead of festering in bitterness over the way he died.
“I think about him around this time, around the Final Four,” she said, speaking of the college basketball tournament. “This mother here, this uncle, they turned their pain into purpose. They are our family, and every life lost is a tragedy to the Bronx community.”
Brandon’s funeral came days after a 1-year-old boy, Davell Gardner, was shot and killed while sitting in a stroller outside a park at a Brooklyn family barbecue.