A high school football star shot in the chest inside a Brooklyn NYCHA apartment was accidentally killed by the son of an NYPD cop fooling around with a gun, prosecutors said Wednesday — a tragedy that has left the victim’s mother devastated.
Victim Ka’mardre Coleman, 16, was with a group of friends who were passing around a gun in a fourth-floor apartment in the Sheepshead Bay Houses on Avenue X near Brown St. when it went off about 5:55 p.m. Monday, authorities say.
Ka’mardre lived in the Nostrand Houses a few blocks away.
“The police said they were playing with a gun,” the victim’s mother, Shameka Bannister, told the Daily News in an exclusive interview. “The person was holding a gun and it went off.”
A 16-year-old boy, whose mother is an NYPD cop, was arrested the next day and charged with manslaughter, criminally negligent homicide and gun possession. The suspect’s name is being withheld due to his young age.
“I want justice,” said Bannister, 49. “My baby didn’t do anything.”
“My son’s birthday is Friday,” she added. “He was going to be 17. He had his whole life in front of him. And now I have got to bury my baby.”
The victim may have been taking pictures and recording TikTok videos as he and three of his football teammates messed with the firearm, the accused shooter’s defense attorney said in court Wednesday.
In his last words to her, Ka’mardre said he was “running to a friend’s house right fast,” Bannister said.
A standout player for the Sheepshead Bay Sharks, Ka’mardre planned to hang out with a group of friends, including some of his teammates, the night he was shot, his mother says.
“Everybody in the apartment left,” Bannister said of the aftermath of the shooting. “They left him.”
The suspect allegedly brought the loaded black-and-pink gun with him to the apartment, where friends live, in a backpack. The shooter and his pals passed the gun to each other in a bedroom, loading and unloading the ammo, prosecutors say.
“The defendant was reloading the ammunition, the gun went off while it was pointed at the deceased’s chest, and it ended up striking and killing Ka’mardre Coleman,” Assistant District Attorney Robert Schwartz said at the accused shooter’s arraignment Wednesday in the youth part of Brooklyn Supreme Court.
The shooter tried to revive his friend with CPR, then took the gun and left, prosecutors said.
A tenant in the Sheepshead Bay Houses said she spied the teen suspect through the peephole of her door leaving the apartment after the shooting.
“I thought they were friends,” said the neighbor, who asked that her name be withheld. “The boy who left just walked out like nothing had happened.”
As the suspect fled the building, he encountered a police officer responding to the chaos who asked him if he knew what had happened, Schwartz said. “He kind of shrugged it off and kept going,” the prosecutor said.
The interaction was caught on the officer’s bodycam, Schwartz added.
A police source says the teen suspect was also caught on surveillance video fleeing the building and later identified as a friend of the victim.
Medics rushed Ka’mardre to South Brooklyn Health, where he died.
Police caught up with the teenage suspect the next day as he was getting into a family member’s car, Schwartz said. Police found the teen’s backpack in the car, he said, but the firearm has not been recovered.
“He was a good kid,” Bannister said of her slain son. “I called him my all-American. He played football and basketball, but he was still my baby.”
A police van sits outside Brooklyn’s Sheepshead Bay Houses where a 16-year-old boy was shot to death Monday.
Ka’mardre aspired to join law enforcement and planned to ride his football career to a college degree before becoming a cop, according to his sister Julani Bannister.
“He inspired young kids. Everyone looked up to him,” said Julani, 21. “He wanted to go to college to play football. His real ambition was to be a police officer.”
The teen suspect’s lawyer, Kenneth Montgomery, cast the shooting as a tragic accident, made possible by a culture that glorifies firearms and makes them easy to obtain.
“The fact that four young kids are in a room fetishizing over guns should not surprise any of us,” he said in court. “The young man who died had a phone, and in that phone, he was TikToking. He was taking pictures he was taking videos, from my understanding, my own investigation, with this gun.”
He said an adult may have been present in the apartment, the mother of the friends who live there.
The teen suspect has never been in trouble with the law, and he was on his way to meet Montgomery when police picked him up, Montgomery said.
“This was a kid who was scared, who was a part of an incident where he just lost a teammate and a friend,” the lawyer said in court.
“They were teammates, friends,” he added outside of court, to reporters. “This is horrible. Putting him in jail to make an example politically, I think, is very short-sighted when we know we’re in a society where there are guns. Kids could get a gun quicker than they can get a book. We know that.”
Judge Adam Perlmutter ordered the teen held on $125,000 bond. The suspect’s mother and aunt declined comment outside the courtroom.
“Me, I don’t feel it was an accident,” the victim’s sister said. “You put your finger on that trigger and you pulled it and you knew right from wrong, so there was no accident. When it costs someone’s life, there is no accident.”
“The house he went to was supposed to be someone he grew up with and very close to in his eyes,” she added.
The victim’s football team celebrated an undefeated season that ended a few months ago with a city championship victory.
“Though he may no longer be with us physically, his spirit, impact, and memories will live on in our hearts forever,” the Sheepshead Bay Sharks posted on social media. “[He] was more than a student-athlete — he was a brother, a teammate, and a cherished part of our community.”
About a dozen votive candles shaped like the number 5 sat outside the Sheepshead Bay Houses Tuesday in honor of Ka’mardre’s jersey number.
A memorial for Ka’mardre Coleman, 16, in the shape of a 5, his jersey number, outside the Sheepshead Bay Houses on Avenue X in Brooklyn. (Nicholas Williams / New York Daily News)
“He was funny, goofy and had a million-dollar smile,” his sister said. “When anyone mentioned my brother, they said they could tell he was raised in a good home … I’m just gonna miss me and him dancing, being goofy, listening to music.”
Ka’mardre was a student at United Charter High School for Advanced Math & Science III just down the street from where he was killed.
“We are deeply saddened,” said Stephanie Millian, a spokeswoman for the school. “This is an incredibly difficult time for our school community, and we extend our heartfelt condolences to the student’s family, friends and loved ones.”
Just months ago, Ka’mardre, a safety and wide receiver, was celebrating his football team’s undefeated season, a campaign that earned them Brooklyn’s 3A Public School Athletic League Championship.
Ka’mardre had since then turned his attention to basketball, where the 5-foot-10 point guard also wore the number 5.