Riley Billingslea was 15 years old, an only child, and a military school student who wanted to become an engineer.<\/p>\n
Nearly a week after he was killed, his family and friends gathered near the Bronx apartment where he had been shot.<\/p>\n
“He always knew how to make everybody laugh. That’s something Riley knew how to do. He made a lot of people laugh,” community member Kaden Hoheb said.<\/p>\n
Police say Billingslea was inside a fifth-floor apartment on Claflin Avenue when a dispute broke out.<\/p>\n
Investigators say the gunman pulled a weapon from a backpack and opened fire, killing Billingslea and grazing a 13-year-old boy.<\/p>\n
The gun has not been recovered. No one has been arrested. Police, though, say they have a person of interest.<\/p>\n
“Young man, turn yourself in. Do right. Riley ain’t never did nobody wrong,” Billingslea’s mom, Ketrice Riley, said.<\/p>\n
His death comes as gun violence involving young people persists.<\/p>\n
NYPD counted 60 shooting victims under age 18 through July 26, just five fewer than at the same point last year. Seven of those victims died.<\/p>\n
Billingslea was killed more than two weeks after that count ended.<\/p>\n
“Riley was my love. I love my only grandson. My only grandchild,” Billingslea’s grandmother, Elaine Rogers, said.<\/p>\n
As the family prepared to release balloons in his memory, the shooting remained unsolved, and their plea remained the same.<\/p>\n
“I just want to keep reiterating for the young man, come forward. Please. Come forward. Put an end to this,” Rogers said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Riley Billingslea was 15 years old, an only child, and a military school student who wanted to become…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":324584,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[10015,387,25,128,303,388,9,24,12,63,308,129,131,130,27,200],"class_list":["post-324583","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-the-bronx","tag-app-crime","tag-app-public-safety","tag-app-top-stories","tag-bronx","tag-crime","tag-louis-finley","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-news","tag-nyc","tag-public-safety","tag-the-bronx","tag-the-bronx-headlines","tag-the-bronx-news","tag-top-stories","tag-vod"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324583","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=324583"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324583\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/324584"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=324583"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=324583"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=324583"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}