By Nayaba Arinde
Editor-at-Large

Somebody shot a 13-year-old.
Troy Gill was on his way home from a Nets game at the Barclays Center. It was a little while before 11 o’clock at night. Reportedly, the teen was approached by an individual who shot him four times in Crown Heights.

Bergen Street neighbors spoke of a barrage of gunshots; although fatally hit in the chest, back, and arm, Troy was still able to make it about a block to St. Marks Avenue, not far from his apartment. There, he collapsed.

“Anyone who knows of a crime and does not speak out when there is an innocent victim; whether it be a woman, a senior citizen, or children – then you are a traitor to your community,” Rev. W. Taharka Robinson, organizer of a rally in support of the Gill family, told Our Time Press.

“Heartbroken, this is a nightmare,” Troy’s stepfather, Joseph Ward, said on News12. “He was a good kid…He was tiny and mighty.”

“Our young men need guidance,” said NYC Gun Czar A.T. Mitchell. While police told Our Time Press that Gill’s killer has yet to be apprehended, Mitchell suggested that there is a public health crisis of gun proliferation and “Babies that are killing babies.

They are killing for likes on social media. They are children; they learn in hindsight. Or in prison.”

On Thursday, February 29, 2024, at 10.40 pm, police arrived on the scene at Brooklyn Avenue and St. Marks Avenue; there, they told the paper that they found the teen, who had sustained “multiple gunshot wounds to the body. EMS responded and transported the male to NYC Health+Hospitals/Kings County where he was subsequently pronounced deceased.”

ABC 7 reported, “Gill had FaceTimed his mother several times that night, from the Barclays Center at 9 p.m. and from an Uber at 10:09 p.m. before he was shot soon after around 10:35 p.m.

They say he was running home, FaceTiming his mother again, when he collapsed. Family members were frantically searching for him when they met police at the scene.”

Impassioned community members, Troy’s parents, and clergy, including Rev. Robinson, later rallied where Troy was shot, condemning the murder of the young boy.

News reports have linked Troy to an alleged association with the Bed Stuy Drench Crew, an alleged Brooklyn street gang.

Troy’s grieving mother Mary Culbertson, maintains that “He was not in a gang. He was a great boy…He was a baby. That should never happen to him or anybody else’s baby.”
“There are no arrests, and the investigation remains ongoing,” a DCPI spokesperson told Our Time Press.

“This fake tough guy code of not snitching only leads to more reckless behavior from someone with a reckless mindset,” Rev. Robinson told Our Time Press. “People in that life have a street code of honor, and things that happen in the streets – stay in the streets.

If there is beef, it is settled in the street, including drugs, guns, or any criminal activity – whatever transpires in the street stays in the street,” said the Chaplain from the 77th Precinct Community Council.

“When there are innocent mothers, senior citizens, innocent children, and innocent men going about their day-to-day activity – if something happens to them, then that street code of honor should be abandoned, and someone should come forward.’’

The same week on Monday afternoon, February 26th, in a Franklin Avenue deli, Nazim Berry, 37, was shot dead. Danette Hollie, his devastated mother, told the press that her son refused to give a man a Black & Mild cigar free of charge. The suspect returned to the Crown Heights deli and “pointed the gun right to the back of his head and shot him.”

Two days later, on Wednesday 28th, February, Guinean immigrant Lamine Bah, 33, was also shot in the head on McKeever Place outside his Ebbets Field apartment in Crown Heights. Reportedly an innocent bystander, the father of 3 young children worked as a cook and a Doordash delivery man.

Mitchell, Founder and CEO of Man Up Inc., the East New York-based community advocacy group, told Our Time Press, “They have not been apprehended yet, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it wasn’t babies killing babies because the shooters are becoming much younger than previously – and the victims are becoming much younger.

When I say babies, I am talking about adolescents whose brains have not developed or matured. Their decision-making processes haven’t developed like that of an adult. They are living their lives based on the internet.

“The internet is the driver of the crime, the beef. That’s where the conflicts that they have between one another can thrive. Sometimes through music. Sometimes through other means, reasons, and neighborhoods.

But it exacerbates whatever the conflict is, because they have onlookers who are mostly majority children, young people as well. And they are playing out this conflict in front of the world really. They are doing things for the likes, to be popular online.”

Mitchell added, “Yes, even killing for likes. They really do not understand the consequences. They are children. And so they learn in hindsight about how severe a crime they committed after they turn a certain age in prison or being shot and killed themselves. It’s a vicious cycle of babies killing babies.”

The solution he said is altering the approach of how to reach the young people at a much earlier age, to be counseled, and mentored to “train their pathways.”

We are up against social media, which is a huge mountain that we have to climb; a huge industry that is making billions of dollars off of the backs and lives of our young people. So we have to reach them where they are.”

That could be the internet spaces in which they reside or the music that they listen to, the decades-long youth advocate said. The schools too, said the father of six. “It used to be the high schools, now we have to go into the elementary and middle schools.

That’s my new target age – 7, 8, 9, 10-years-old and older. We’ve got to get to them before they make a poor decision because, in this city, this state, and this country, Black and brown boys are detained, prosecuted, and held against their will – as early as seven years old. We can’t wait until they reach 12, 13, or 14.”

The proliferation of marijuana stores is not lessening the problems, said Mitchell. “This is not even weed,” he said. “This new age marijuana is filled with all kinds of substances, and no one knows what it is actually doing to their brains, and how it is impacting their behavior.”

“The young men need to see more positive male representation,” Kwaku Ofori Payton told Our Time Press. “These young boys are surrounded by negative images of themselves, whether it be on TV, social media, movies, or just everyday life.

The women have worldwide movements, but the young Black men have what? They need to have support systems which speak to their needs, and gives them the resources so that they can build healthy and productive development.”

Playing and teaching African drumming in schools for decades, the Brooklyn native and founder of DrumLove, Payton said, “We have to use ‘Culture as a Weapon,’ to create the change. I see how our young people respond to the arts, and how the drumming brings something great out of them.”