A 15-year-old boy was busted Thursday in the gang-related shooting that wounded a teen two years his junior near a Bronx subway station, law enforcement sources said.
The teen suspect is expected to be charged in the July 15 shooting that left a 13-year-old boy injured at the intersection of Westchester Avenue and Simpson Street in Longwood, the sources said.
He was picked up by members of the US Marshals Regional Fugitive Task Force and NYPD, according to the sources.
The victim told investigators that he and his cousin were walking to the train to go to a party when they came face-to-face with more than a dozen kids fighting, NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny said last month.
Two Citi Bike riders turned towards the victim and asked if he was involved with either the Ewok or Top 5 gangs – a pair of rival groups in the area, Kenny said.
“[The teen said], ‘No,’ but they’re going to fight anyway,” Kenny said. “Guns are pulled and our victim is shot.”
The boy was shot in the left shin and left heel, and taken to Harlem Hospital, where he was treated and released for non-life-threatening injuries.
The victim, who lives in a NYCHA development on the Lower East Side, is affiliated with a different gang in Lower Manhattan called EBK, short for Everybody Kills, Kenny said.
“[There’s] no reason that EBK would be fighting with the gangs in the Bronx,” the police official added. “It [seems] they saw a group of kids they didn’t recognize in front of them, confronted them about what gang they were in and that led to shots being fired.”
The honorable Ralph Sozio, US Marshal for the Southern District of New York, applauded law enforcement’s work to get the young suspect off the street.
“The US Marshals and NYPD will be relentless in our pursuit to keep our children safe,” Sozio said.
