Three teenagers, ages 13, 14 and 15, have been charged in the stabbing death of Nyheem Wright (17) during an apparent fight over a girl after a day of school in Brooklyn (NYC).
The 13-year-old suspect allegedly committed the homicide, and the other two have been charged with assault and gang activity, the NYPD said.
The three accused hooded youths turned themselves in to police on Sunday night. Wright, a high school senior at K728 Liberation Diploma Plus High School, was killed in front of his twin brother in a Coney Island parking lot on the afternoon of January 20.
The names of the suspects were not released by the NYPD due to their ages. It was also not clear if they studied in the same high school as the victim. The 13-year-old defendant had at least one prior arrest for assault, law enforcement sources told the New York Post.
The 15-year-old had eight previous arrests for assault, robbery and grand theft. At the time of Wright’s death he was on probation for an illegal weapons violation, and he is also a suspect in two non-fatal shootings in the city, the sources said. The third 14-year-old suspect had been arrested for two previous robberies.
The police officers were able to catch the teenagers by following their movements on video surveillance cameras before, during and after the crime.
Police sources said a fight between two students over a girl the day before led to Wright’s murder. His mother, Simone Brooks, said his other injured son, Raheem, “stayed with her twin brother the whole time,” trying to help him and then watching him die.
That same afternoon, an 18-year-old teenager was stabbed in the back outside a Lower Manhattan high school. Young people are increasingly protagonists in gun violence in New York as victims and perpetrators, particularly shootings and attacks with bladed weapons.
This month two teenagers were stabbed to death in gang attacks in Queens and Brooklyn, just hours apart. One of the cases happened behind Flushing High School. The next day a 13-year-old boy was arrested after a shooting left two teenagers injured outside a Queens high school.
That same week, a 13-year-old boy was detained by police after he was caught with a gun in his backpack at a Bronx high school. Later that day, also in that county, a Hispanic teen was fatally shot and another was injured outside a night basketball game.
In early January, another 14-year-old student was arrested after a loaded handgun was seized from his Queens high school on the first day of school in 2023.
In September an NYPD report found that recidivism among teens had risen sharply over the past five years and the number of gunmen and their underage victims had tripled in recent years.