NYPD officials announced the arrest of a 17-year-old who they say sprayed six bullets on a Bronx Friday, slaying one youth and injuring two others.
Police Commissioner Keechant Sewell named Jeremiah Ryan as the alleged gunman, who she charged with murder, attempted murder, and criminal possession of a weapon. Sewell bemoaned the death of 16-year-old Angellyh Yambo, fatally shot while walking home from school yesterday afternoon.
“Angellyh Yambo had a bright future. She was doing everything right,” Sewell said at a press conference held Saturday offering her condolences to the student’s family, and to the other victims and their loved ones. “We can pray this arrest brings them some sense of solace.”
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Police officials took only two questions from reporters, and neither explicitly confirmed or denied reports that the shooter committed the crimes with a “ghost gun”—a weapon produced without a traceable serial number. Rather, Chief Timothy McCormack only referred to an inquiry about how a teen might obtain such a weapon as a “great question.”
McCormack lamented the pain of both Yambo’s and Ryan’s relatives, alluding to the suspect’s mother as a “hard-working woman” whose son previously had “zero police contact.”
“We have two families that are completely destroyed right now: our victim’s family, and our shooter’s family,” McCormack said. “He goes from smoking marijuana to killing somebody.”
McCormack emphasized that Ryan’s arrest was “just a beginning” of an investigation.
But the grandfather of the accused denied Ryan’s guilt to the New York Post.
“I don’t think he did it,” the unnamed relative told the tabloid. “They just got him at the precinct trying to scare him. That’s how the police do things. I’m born and raised in the Bronx. I know.”
