The teen would have turned 17 years old on Friday. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s his birthday,\u201d said Edrionna Bland, the victim\u2019s cousin. \u201cIt\u2019s no candlelight or balloons. It is, but it\u2019s his birthday.\u201d <\/p>\n
Police sources said Coleman was shot in the chest while with teenage friends inside a bedroom at the Sheepshead Bay Houses on Avenue X. <\/p>\n
Sources said a teen was handling a gun when it went off. Investigators said the shooting may have been an accident. <\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t want to believe it, but he\u2019s really gone,\u201d said Bland. \u201cWhen I walk into his house, his room is going to be empty, and I\u2019m never going to see him again.\u201d <\/p>\n
Loved ones said the high school sophomore was a talented football and basketball player. <\/p>\n
Friends described the victim as a good kid and funny, who had a positive impact on others. <\/p>\n
\u201c[Coleman] was someone who made everyone feel included and happy,\u201d said one friend in front of the crowd during the vigil. \u201cOne thing I always remember is how he could make people smile no matter what was going on.\u201d <\/p>\n
A 16-year-old boy is charged with criminally negligent homicide and manslaughter. <\/p>\n
Investigators have not released his name due to his age. <\/p>\n
News 12 reached out to that teen\u2019s attorney, who called the fatal shooting “devastating” and a “heartbreaking tragedy.”<\/p>\n
The attorney told News 12 that the teen was Coleman\u2019s football teammates and is the son of an NYPD officer \u2013 but the gun involved in the shooting did not belong to that NYPD officer. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The teen would have turned 17 years old on Friday. \u201cIt\u2019s his birthday,\u201d said Edrionna Bland, the victim\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":177976,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[98,100,99,2464,786,9,24,63,305,9952,8193,1096,11650,3980,32328],"class_list":["post-177975","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn-headlines","tag-brooklyn-news","tag-deadly-shooting","tag-fatal-shooting","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-nycha","tag-nycha-complex","tag-sheepshead-bay","tag-shooting","tag-shooting-victims","tag-shootings","tag-vigil"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177975","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=177975"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177975\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/177976"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=177975"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=177975"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=177975"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}