A promising 16-year-old high school basketball player has a stray bullet lodged in his spine after being shot at a Brooklyn bus stop — and doctors are unsure if he will be able to walk again, the teen victim and his worried family tell the Daily News.
Nana Donkor was supposed to play in his first hoops game of the season on Tuesday.
Instead, the high school junior was undergoing spinal surgery at Maimonides Medical Center from a gunshot wound to the back he suffered after watching a local football game in Midwood two days earlier.
The brave teen vows he will not only walk again but make it back to the court.
“I’m going to make a full recovery,” Nana told The News in a hoarse whisper from his hospital bed. “I’ve got to be strong. I have a few colleges interested. They want me to come to the school and play basketball for them.”
He faces many challenges ahead.
“Doctors said he cannot walk,” his mother said. “They already told me my son was going to be paralyzed and he is going to need a wheelchair and they are going to train him how to use it.”
“With God, he can change everything,” she added. “He is so young, we are just hoping he will grow and recover to walk.”
Nana Donkor was shot in the back on Sunday after watching a football game in Brooklyn. (Obtained by Daily News)
Nana was shot near Avenue J and E. 16th St. in Midwood just after 4 p.m. Sunday. There have been no arrests.
“I remember waiting for a bus to get some food,” Nana said. “Someone called me by my name and gave me a high five. Three masked individuals walked by. Shots — there were three or four of them. One hit me. I fell down. It was like in slow motion.”
“I realized I couldn’t get up,” he added. “I laid there and said my prayers.”
As good Samaritans rushed to the teen’s aid, he asked for help contacting his mother.
“He said he heard the noise and saw people running away,” his mother said. “And then my son was on the floor and that’s when a man went to help him. My son gave the man his (cell phone) password and told him, ‘Call my mom.’ I picked up the phone and he said, ‘Mom, I got shot, I got shot.’ I said, ‘Stop joking.’ He said, ‘Mom, I’m for real, I got shot.’ His voice was in pain.”
Daniella said the bullet lodged in a sensitive area of her son’s spine and that doctors say it would be difficult to remove without causing further damage. Surgeons operated on his spine Tuesday but left the bullet in place.
“He can’t walk for now,” she said.
The uncertainty is a crushing blow for the athletic and talented teen who had impressed his coaches enough that they were considering putting him in the starting lineup. Nana lives with his family in Far Rockaway, Queens, and goes to the Academy of Medical Technology, a college board school in the neighborhood.
He used to go to Canarsie High School but transferred to the nearby school because his family was worried about his safety on the long commute.
Nana’s cousin Jeffrey Amponsah, an assistant coach for the Rockaway high school team where Nana plays, also coaches an Amateur Athletic Union basketball team that features the teen.
“He started basketball at the age of 8 or 9,” Amponsah said. “Mine was one of the first teams he played on, so from there he started venturing out to play with other teams. But whenever I had a team, he would always play ball with me.”
“He is a good, hardworking, very ambitious kid,” he added. “He is very curious. He wants to know what’s going on at any given time. He doesn’t want to miss a beat.”
Nana was supposed to accompany the family to church on Sunday but was excused because he told them he had a game that afternoon, which wasn’t entirely true.
Donkor said her son led them to believe he was playing in a hoops game that afternoon but he actually went to a football game with a girl he knew.
“He said that when the game was over, he was going to call an Uber, but then they were hungry,” Donkor said. While deciding what to eat at the bus stop, shots rang out. Only Nana was struck.
“My son was innocent,” Donkor said. Cops confirm Nana is not believed to have been the intended target.
A police source said Nana is a “a good kid” and that invesitgators believe the intended target was an acquainance of the victim who gave Nana a handshake just before shots rang out.
“He was kind of regretting going out,” Nana’s mother said of her conversation with him after the shooting. “He was saying, ‘I should have stayed in my bed. I should have stayed. I should have gone to church with dad. Mom, you were right.’ He was very regretful.”
As of Sunday, the 70th Precinct covering Midwood has seen 11 shootings this year, compared to 10 during the same time frame last year. Citywide, shootings are down to record lows, with 652 incidents this year through Sunday, a 23% drop from the 843 shootings by this point last year, NYPD stats show.
Nana says what happened to him could happen to anybody.
“You’ve got to be careful,” Nana counselled his worried family at his hospital bedside. “A bullet has no one’s name on it.”