A 15-year-old aspiring MMA fighter was killed by an errant bullet from a gunman just two years older than him, authorities said Tuesday — one of five teens shot in a less than 12-hour explosion of youth-on-youth violence across the Big Apple.
Foridun Mavlonov on Tuesday became the latest victim of the city’s cruel bloodletting — struck on a Brooklyn street Monday for no other reason than being in the wrong place at the wrong time, police officials said.
“He always stayed out of trouble, never got involved in any fights. He was always such a calm boy,” said Azat Jorayev, one of the slain boy’s relatives.
His grief-stricken father, Firdavs Mavlonov, whose first language is Russian, added gravely: “Every time is dangerous, every day dangerous.
“Today my son died. Maybe another day, different people’s son died,” he said.
The burst of gun violence that followed his son’s unintended shooting in Bensonhurst at around 1 p.m. would prove that.
A little more than eight hours later, at 9:20 p.m., police said a 16-year-old boy was shot and wounded during a fight with a group of Citi Bike-borne teenagers in The Bronx. And two hours after that, three teens were laid low by a hail of bullets when a triggerman — part of a group of five kids — opened fire in the middle of Times Square, according to cops.
It’s par for the course in New York City, where about 58 kids under 18 were shot during the first six months of 2023, according to the most recent police data.
Although that’s down from 89 in the first half of 2022 and 70 in 2021, it’s far higher than the 37 kids gunned down in the first half of 2020 or the 35 shot during the same time in 2019.
And it means that this year, one out of every 10 people shot was a child, according to the data.
In the case of Mavlonov — a James Madison High School student who was training to someday fight in the UFC — police said the gunman, a 17-year-old boy, had been aiming at a rival from summer school.
The shooter got into an argument with another boy at Franklin Delano Roosevelt High School and the two agreed to meet after for a fistfight, NYPD Chief of Department James Essig told reporters.
The teen who was targeted by the shooter was walking with five other boys – including Mavlonov – and a girl, when the suspect pulled out a gun and fired off seven rounds, the chief said.
One struck Mavlonov in the back, leaving the fighter known for his pacifist ways mortally wounded on a Brooklyn street corner.
“He was like a big brother for everyone — he looked out for them,” a 15-year-old friend and former sparring partner told The Post on Tuesday. “He wouldn’t use violence … he didn’t want to fight. What he did was settle it down.”
Some blame the ongoing spate of teen-on-teen shootings on the elimination of stop-and-frisk, the controversial policy that allowed cops to search people who had committed no crime.
Others blamed New York’s “Raise the Age” law – which has stopped the state from automatically prosecuting 16- and 17-year-olds as adults.
“They raised the age of responsibility, so various teenagers are taking advantage,” Maria Haberfeld, a professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, told The Post.
“The serious crimes in the last few years — when it comes to juveniles — are on the rise because they face no consequences,” she continued. “There is a sense of lawlessness.”
A recently released study by the nonprofit Center for Justice Innovation, however, found that young men in Brooklyn carried guns because they feared for their lives or those of their loved ones.
And neither aggressive policing nor the threat of jail acted as any real deterrent, the study found. Many respondents told researchers they’d rather be “judged by 12 than carried by six” – or, in other words, they’d rather go to jail than the cemetery.
Regardless, the blood continues to soak New York City streets.
The 16-year-old shot in the Bronx was hit at the intersection of Boston Road and Charlotte Street after he and another group of kids on Citi Bikes exchanged words, Essig said.
The chief didn’t know what sparked the dispute. But it ended with one of the boys in St. Barnabas Hospital, being treated for gunshot wounds to his chest and leg.
The Times Square shooting happened under similar circumstances, with a group of about 25 youth riding Citi Bikes into the crossroads of the world just as a group of about five kids got off the subway near 40th Street and Seventh Avenue around 11:50 p.m., Essig said.
The gunman – who was part of the train-bound sect – let loose eight shots from a 9mm handgun at about 10 minutes to midnight and hit a 15-, 16- and 17-year-old, Essig said. He then fled on West 41st Street.
All three victims were hospitalized in stable condition.
Police aren’t sure what caused that shooting either, Essig said.
Additional reporting by Amanda Woods and Jared Downing
