Teen held in teen’s slay
16-year-old shot 15-year-old in Brooklyn in Sept., police say
After months on the run, a 16-year-old boy has been charged in the shooting death of an even younger teen in Brooklyn after asking the victim what gang he belonged to, police said Thursday.
The 15-year-old victim, Unique Smith, had no gang ties, according to cops.
Unique was confronted by two masked teens as he sat on a park bench with two girls inside McLaughlin Park in Downtown Brooklyn around 1:30 p.m. on the first day of school Sept. 7, police said.
They argued, then got into a fight, with one pulling out a gun and shooting Unique in the abdomen as about 30 people visiting the park, children included, ran for cover.
Cops performed CPR on Unique until medics arrived and rushed him to New York-Presbyterian Brooklyn Methodist Hospital, where he died, police said.
The suspect was arrested Wednesday and charged with murder and gun possession. He had no previous arrests.
His name was not released by the NYPD because he’s a juvenile.
Sources said the suspect was nabbed in upstate Binghamton after months on the lam. At his arraignment in Brooklyn Criminal Court, his lawyer made a motion for bail, but was swiftly denied.
“Mr. Walker chose not to stay in the jurisdiction, for lack of a better term, to an undisclosed location, and had to be tracked down by the warrants squad,” said Judge Craig Walker. “I’m sure [he] knew that the police were looking for him, and he had ample opportunity to turn himself in.”
A prosecutor said a confrontation in the park quickly escalated.
“There was a short exchange where the defendant asked the complainant, Unique Smith, about his gang affiliation,” said Joseph Bianco, an assistant district attorney.
After that, there was “a very brief physical altercation,” Blanco continued.
Walker took out a gun “and discharged that firearm, striking Unique Smith in the stomach,” he said. “That caused his death in the hospital.”
The arrest comes amid a rash of violence across the city involving young people, including a 15-year-old boy, Josue Lopez-Ortega, fatally shot Jan. 19 as he left the Police Athletic League building in the Longwood section of the Bronx.
Unique, who lived in Bedford-Stuyvesant, was a student at Brooklyn Laboratory Charter Schools, two blocks from the park.
“You was better off taking my life for his,” Smith’s devastated mother, Dominque Simmons, posted on Facebook after he was killed. “Why save me and not him?”
“I never thought I will lose you so early,” she wrote in another post. “This the worst pain ever. I love you. We fight, so what? I want you here. This world wasn’t ready for you to leave. You my first child, you my heart’ you are me. Why you? Why my son? Why him?”
Unique’s grandmother, Deborah Simmons, said she had warned the boy about the dangers that lurked in the neighborhood, but added that she didn’t want to be overprotective.
“I see what’s going on in the streets and
I would say, ‘Unique be careful, please,’ ” said Simmons, 57. “You can’t make the kids stay in the house. He loved to play basketball. He was the average 15 year old. But I always told him be careful.”
Simmons said she’d heard cops caught the suspected killer, calling the news bittersweet.
“I’m just so happy that they caught him,” she said. “You know, it eased a little pain that we’re feeling, but I know we’re never going to get him back.”
Simmons described her grandson as a loving person with a perpetual smile.
“I have a thousand pictures of him,” Simmons said. “Every last one of the pictures, he was always smiling.”
She said Unique’s death was especially hard on his 7-year-old sister.
“Destiny loved her brother,” Simmons said. “She cries. Over Christmas time, she was crying. I had to calm her down, and she said, ‘I just miss my brother.’ ” Simmons misses him, too.
“My Christmas was terrible,” she said. “His birthday was terrible ... I miss my grandson. That was my first born grandson and I miss him. And everybody misses him. ... It’s not the same anymore.”