Teen shot and killed in Southeast Queens park

The basketball courts at Roy Wilkins Park where a 15-year-old boy was shot on Thursday afternoon.  File photo by Tdorante10/Wikimedia Commons

By Jacob Kaye

A 15-year-old boy was shot and killed in Roy Wilkins Park in Southeast Queens on Thursday.

The fatal shooting of Jaden Pierre, who lived in South Richmond Hill, shocked the local community and sparked widespread condemnation of the gun violence that has slowly increased in the southeast region of the borough.

Police say that Pierre was shot by an unknown assailant around 6:15 p.m. in broad daylight inside the St. Albans park.

A fight involving a large number of teens had broken out near the basketball courts just before the shooting unfolded.

Pierre, who attended Eagle Academy just down the street from the park, was reportedly beaten by a group of his peers before one pulled out a gun and shot him in the chest.

Video of the fight posted online showed that at least a dozen teens witnessed the killing.

Police did not say what caused the skirmish.

The 15-year-old was taken by medics to Jamaica Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

The NYPD, which called the shooting a “horrific act of violence” in a social media post, said the suspected shooter was wearing all gray clothing and white sneakers at the time of the attack.

No arrests had been made as of Friday afternoon.

“NYPD detectives are working to find those responsible for this senseless shooting,” the NYPD said.

Pierre’s death set off a wave of condemnation from local elected officials, who denounced the act of gun violence.

“Gun violence is not the split-second pulling of a trigger,” Queens Borough President Donovan Richards said in a statement. “A bullet’s flight truly begins the moment a young person first feels the sting of disinvestment in their community. It begins when that betrayal starts to degrade their perceived value and blur their vision of what their future could be. And while the loved ones of both the victim and the shooter are still here to grieve both the life lost and the life forever altered, the human impact of gun violence has no end, either.”

“The pain of losing Jaden Pierre to gun violence at 15 years old is indescribable, and I grieve with his family, friends, Eagle Academy classmates and teachers and all who loved him,” he added. “His life had meaning.”

Richards said Pierre’s death will “fuel the work we continue to do citywide…to eradicate violence and uplift our young people.”

City Councilmember Nantasha Williams said she was “deeply saddened and heartbroken to learn of another shooting in our district.”

“Another incident. Another act of violence. We cannot allow this to become acceptable,” she added. “Tonight, I am thinking deeply about the young lives impacted and the work ahead to break this cycle.”

City Councilmember Ty Hankerson called the shooting “unacceptable.”

“This is not how we want to start our summer,” he said.

There had been two shooting incidents within the confines of the 113th Precinct prior to Pierre’s shooting on Thursday. By April 12 of last year, there had been 4 shootings.

But while there has been a 50 percent reduction in shooting so far this year within the 113th Precinct, shootings in the region have increased.

There were a dozen shooting incidents in the Queens South patrol borough through the second week of April, according to NYPD statistics. There had been 9 shooting incidents by the same point last year, marking a 33 percent increase.

Pierre’s killing is reminiscent of the shooting death of 14-year-old Aamir Griffin, who was gunned down in 2019, around a half mile away from where Pierre was shot.

Griffin was playing basketball at the Baisley Park Houses on Oct. 26, 2019 when another teenager, Sean Brown, mistook him for a rival gang member.

Brown, who was arrested as part of a major gang takedown in Southeast Queens, was convicted for Griffin’s killing in 2024 and sentenced to 30 years behind bars.