The father of a teenage boy from Ghana who was shot dead Thursday morning, October 29, on his way to school in the Bronx, has alleged that his son was being bullied at the DreamYard preparatory school, adding that the school’s principal had recently informed him that two students were suspended for harassing him.
The NYPD received a report on Thursday morning about a shooting near Crotona Park in the Bronx, a police spokesperson said, per The Guardian. Responding officers found the victim, 15-year-old Javits Frimpong, with a gunshot wound to his stomach at about 9.24 am.
Javits was rushed to a local hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani issued a statement after Javits’ murder.
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In a statement shared on X, Mamdani said that the “murder of a child is a pain no parent should have to endure, let alone from thousands of miles away.”
“Javits Frimpong’s mother deserves to say goodbye to her son in person. I just got off the phone with President Trump and he has agreed to grant her visa immediately,” he added. “All of New York City is mourning this tragedy.”
No arrests have been made yet. Police are reportedly looking for three teenage boys in connection to the shooting.
Javits Frimpong’s father speaks out
Surveillance footage captured Javits running, with a person wearing all black trailing behind. A different angle appeared to show masked individuals in dark clothing fleeing the site of the shooting.
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“I lost him,” the teenager’s father, Thomas Frimpong, told reporters on Thursday. “I don’t know what to do now.”
The tragedy took place as Javits marked one year of being in New York after arriving from Ghana, his father said, describing the slain teen as “clever” and “quiet”. Thomas also alleged that his son was being bullied at the DreamYard preparatory school, adding that the school’s principal had recently informed him that two students were suspended for harassing Javits.
Ghana’s minister of foreign affairs, Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa, condemned the attack in a statement.
“We will pursue justice and we will make sure that those who did this do not get away with it,” Ablakwa said.
“Just one year ago, Javits arrived in the United States from Ghana to reunite with his father and begin a new chapter of his life. Like so many Ghanaian immigrant families, his family came together in America with hopes of greater opportunity, security, and a promising future,” the Ghana diaspora public affairs collective, a US-based non-profit, also said in a statement. “That future has now been violently taken away.”