Boy, 15, killed in ambush near Bronx home was from Ghana, dreamed of being doctor

A 15-year-old boy from Ghana with dreams of being a physician was fatally shot in the Bronx Thursday morning just steps from his home, police said.

Teenager Javits Frimpong was struck in the abdomen around 9:24 a.m. on Crotona Place near E. 171st St., just one block south of where he lived, in Mott Haven.

Just the day before had been the one-year anniversary of his new life in the U.S. after immigrating from West Africa to join his father living in the Bronx.

“Yesterday, yesterday was his one year,” his crestfallen dad Thomas Frimpong, 60, told the Daily News.

He said he last saw his son Thursday morning as he was leaving for work, since he would always wake the boy to lock the door behind him as they share one key.

“I don’t know anything,” he said about why his son was killed. “Only I got a call that the principal told me that my son had been shot.”

But he said his son recently had been bullied by a couple of students at the school who were recently suspended.

The tenth grader was starting out on his way to school at Dream Yard Preparatory School, just an 18-minute walk away on the other side of Claremont Park, when he was ambushed by three masked attackers who shot him once and fled, according to witnesses.

Video obtained by the Daily News shows a suspect running after the teen along the sidewalk, then — after they both go off screen — fleeing in the other direction.

Frimpong was rushed to St. Barnabas Hospital, where he underwent surgery and was initially believed to be in stable condition. But he died a short time later, police said.

The victim was the intended target of the suspects — three males, each wearing a surgical mask, according to cops.

They ran off, possibly into nearby Crotona Park, police said, and are being sought.

Witnesses from a homeless shelter across from where Frimpong was struck said that after hearing the gunshot they rushed out along with the place’s manager to find the youth sprawled on his side, bleeding out on the street.

A 59-year-old resident of the shelter, whose windows overlook the scene, who didn’t give his name said he saw the incident unfold.

“They were waiting for him in the park,” he said. “They wore hoodies and masks. I saw him running, I heard the shot and went down.

“The manager of the shelter asked if he was shot. He said, ‘I don’t know. I don’t know.’ There was blood all over his white T-shirt. She was applying pressure and he was going in and out of consciousness. He wasn’t looking good.”

“It was a pack of kids,” said Frederick Wiedman, 62, another shelter resident. “It was one shot.”

“He fell on the sidewalk by the Nissan, over there. A car alarm went off and people started screaming.”

Wiedman said police were calling for a “wagon,” but the ambulance didn’t come fast enough, so they put Frimpong in a police van and rushed him to the hospital.

“The kid wasn’t moving,” he said. “The cops got him up and into a police van. At least they got him out of here — and quick.

“It’s sad. These kids with guns are out of control.”

Thomas Frimpong, who is a yellow cab driver, said after receiving the principal’s call that Javits had been shot, he rushed to the hospital to be by his side, only for the boy to die after emergency surgery could not save him.

“Even when I was coming from Manhattan, I ran red light, like, two times,” he said. “Oh, my God.”

The father said two teens at the school had been fighting his son and bullying him and were recently suspended, though he stopped short of accusing them in the killing.

He described the victim as quiet and shy, and extremely bright, with dreams of one day becoming a doctor.

“My son is very quiet,” he said. “My son didn’t talk. He don’t talk. The school can testify. My son is always quiet, always, always.”

“He scared talking to me,” he said. “Always on his phone. Every time he comes from school, he just go to my bedroom, sitting there looking at his phone, playing games, and I say at times, I ask him, ‘Javits, go out, go to the park.’ He never step outside.”

“My son very, very, very clever,” he added. “Even I don’t understand how my son is very clever like that. Even when he was at Ghana, his grade to high school was very, very, very high. He always wanted to be a physician. I was finding the school for him. He was trying to get a science school.”

Thomas Frimpong, who moved to New York City around 2000, has several other children living in other states, but Javits was his only child living here.

He called the boy’s mom in Ghana to inform her of the terrible news.

“I just called the mother,” he said. “I can hear her voice crying, crying, crying. All the family members are crying.”