The teenager was captured without incident in a hotel in the Bronx early Friday over the killing of Kyhara Tay, NYPD Chief of Detectives James Essig said during a news conference. The teenager and his mother had booked the room the night before, he said.
The shooting unfolded Monday just before 5 p.m. when an 18-year-old was allegedly driving an electric scooter with the 15-year-old riding in the back. The 15-year-old tried to shoot another 13-year-old boy who was fleeing from the pair on foot, authorities say. A stray bullet hit Kyhara in her abdomen and she died later that night at a hospital.
The alleged shooter “ended the life of a totally innocent, completely uninvolved 11-year-old girl,” NYPD Commissioner Keechant Sewell said during Friday’s news conference.
“I won’t say she was in the wrong place because why shouldn’t an 11-year-old child be able to stand outside in broad daylight?”
Victims are often ages “11, 15, 18. Over and over again, we’re seeing 11, 15, 18,” said New York City Mayor Eric Adams on Friday. “Kids killing kids. Illegal guns as easy to buy as candy and comic books. They are everywhere.”
Adams added that since being sworn in, his administration has removed 2,887 guns from the streets, but new firearms continue show up.
So far this year, 16 children under the age of 17 have been shot in the Bronx, said Darcel Clark, the borough’s district attorney. Eleven of those victims were under 15, and five of whom were under 14, Clark said.
“We have to focus on gun violence all the time,” Clark said.
The 15-year-old believed to be the shooter faces charges of murder in the second degree, first-degree manslaughter and criminal possession of a weapon in the second degree, Essig said.
CNN has reached out to the Bronx District Attorney’s office to inquire whether the 15-year-old has retained an attorney.
