A Brooklyn high school football player killed when the teenage son of an NYPD police officer accidentally shot him in the chest was honored by friends and classmates with a candlelight vigil, at which he was remembered as a star athlete who helped lead his team to a city championship.
More than 300 students gathered Friday in the courtyard of Sheepshead Bay High School, where Ka’Mardre Coleman, 16, was enrolled as a junior before he was shot in the chest while hanging out with a group of friends at a NYCHA apartment Monday evening.
The mourners wept as balloons shaped like the No. 5 — the number on Ka’Mardre’s football and basketball jerseys — floated overhead.
“He was a picture-perfect example of a student athlete,” Herbert Matute, 15, who played football and basketball with Ka’Mardre, said at the vigil. “He was a three-sport athlete: football, basketball and track. He was great at everything. He helped make our team champions.”
Kerry Burke / New York Daily News; Instagram
Ka’mardre Coleman, inset, was fatally shot in the Sheepshead Bay Houses on Avenue X in Brooklyn on Monday, March 23, 2026. (Kerry Burke / New York Daily News; Instagram)
The teen’s friends, including fellow teammates on his football squad, were passing around a loaded, pink-and-black firearm in a fourth-floor apartment at the Sheepshead Bay Houses on Avenue X near Brown St. when it went off about 5:55 p.m., authorities say.
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’m glad that they caught him,” said Ka’Mardre’s stepfather, 53-year-old Travis Johnson. “We’re glad that he’s been charged. We feel that there’s a good chance he’ll face consequences. Our family wants justice.”
The shooter tried to revive his friend with CPR, then took the gun and left, prosecutors said.
“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 on Wednesday in the youth part of Brooklyn Supreme Court.
Kerry Burke / New York Daily News
Mourners release balloons outside Sheepshead Bay High School in Brooklyn on Friday, March 27, 2026, to remember Ka’mardre Coleman. (Kerry Burke / New York Daily News)
Both the suspect and Ka’Mardre, a safety and wide receiver, played football for the Sheepshead Bay Sharks, who celebrated an undefeated season that ended in triumph at Brooklyn’s 3A Public School Athletic League Championship.
“He was a good kid, but he made dumb decisions,” 15-year-old Jayden DeJesus, another Sheepshead Bay Sharks player, said of the suspect. “We’re all hurt by this.”
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 told the 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 — the mother of the friends who live there — may have been present in the apartment.
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, the attorney 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 to reporters outside of court. “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.”
Ka’mardre Coleman, 16, was fatally shot in the Sheepshead Bay Houses on Avenue X in Brooklyn on Monday, March 23, 2026. (Instagram)
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 21-year-old sister, Julani Bannister, 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.
Friday’s vigil coincided with what would have been Ka’Mardre’s 17th birthday.
Kerry Burke / New York Daily News
Julani Bannister, 21, sister of Ka’mardre Coleman, speaks at a vigil outside Sheepshead Bay High School on Friday. (Kerry Burke / New York Daily News)
“Ka’Mardre will be truly missed,” said the teen’s football coach, Ubeaka McKinney. “Last year I got to celebrate his birthday with him, myself and couple of other players. We went out to eat. I was blessed to have the opportunity to coach him. He is truly going to be missed.”
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.
“He inspired young kids. Everyone looked up to him,” Julani said. “He wanted to go to college to play football. His real ambition was to be a police officer.”
After winning the city football championship, Ka’mardre turned his attention to basketball, where the 5-foot-10 point guard also wore the number 5.
“He was a light to everybody,” 14-year-old Drilauni Thomas said at the vigil. “If the coach didn’t play you, he would do his best to get you in the game. He would motivate you to work harder. Ka’Mardre carried everybody.”