{"id":370608,"date":"2026-10-11T22:44:44","date_gmt":"2026-10-11T22:44:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/370608\/"},"modified":"2026-10-11T22:44:44","modified_gmt":"2026-10-11T22:44:44","slug":"murder-of-15-year-old-boy-in-harlem-an-orchestrated-hit-prosecutors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/370608\/","title":{"rendered":"Murder of 15-year-old boy in Harlem an ‘orchestrated hit’: prosecutors"},"content":{"rendered":"

The 15-year-old boy gunned down a block away from his Harlem home<\/a> was trailed by two suspects wearing clothing they could easily discard in what prosecutors called an \u201corchestrated hit,\u201d officials said Sunday.<\/p>\n

The teen arrested for the death of Jihad Pack was ordered held without bail Friday while a second suspect \u2014 the actual triggerman \u2014 remained at large, officials said. The 15-year-old suspect\u2019s name is not being released because of his age.<\/p>\n

Prosecutors from the Manhattan District Attorney\u2019s office said the arrested teen stalked Pack with the gunman and hid behind a car as the gunman fired off four rounds from a .9-mm pistol, killing Pack and hitting a 57-year-old innocent bystander around 6:20 p.m. Wednesday, prosecutors said.<\/p>\n

Pack was shot one door down from the building where he lived in NYCHA\u2019s Martin Luther King Jr. Towers<\/a>. The mortally wounded teen staggered to the walkway outside his building on W. 115th St. near Malcolm X Blvd., where a family friend found him bleeding out on the pavement, his life ebbing away.<\/p>\n

\u201cI took off my shirt to put pressure on the wound. He was saying, \u2018Please! Please, I don\u2019t want to die!\u2019\u201d said the friend, 28, who gave her name as Kadisha. \u201cI was the last person he spoke to. His last words were, \u2018Kadisha, I don\u2019t want to die.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Medics rushed both victims to Mt. Sinai Morningside, where Jihad died.<\/p>\n

\"Police<\/p>\n

Kerry Burke \/ New York Daily News<\/p>\n

Jihad Pack, 15, was fatally shot and a 57-year-old man sitting in a plastic chair was wounded in a shooting on W. 115th St. near Malcolm X Blvd. inside NYCHA’s Martin Luther King Jr. Towers on Wednesday, Oct. 7, 2026. (Kerry Burke \/ New York Daily News)\u00a0<\/p>\n

After the incident<\/a>, the shooter passed off the weapon to the arrested 15-year-old boy as both of them fled in different directions.<\/p>\n

The accomplice fled north up 5th Ave. and turned onto E 116th St., where he changed his clothes into a thin gray sweatsuit while still wearing the same black mask and shoes and clutching the gun in his waistband.<\/p>\n

Responding officers caught up to him and recognized the outline of a gun in the teen\u2019s waistband, even though he told cops that he was \u201cshooting hoops,\u201d according to court documents.<\/p>\n

He was apprehended by cops after a foot pursuit and was charged with murder, attempted murder, and criminal possession of a weapon.<\/p>\n

Cops recovered the pistol that had a bullet in the chamber and seven in the magazine. The pistol was described as a high-capacity magazine, capable of holding 12 bullets, prosecutors said.<\/p>\n

The unapprehended shooter took off heading towards 5th Ave. into the Taft Houses development and remained at large Sunday.<\/p>\n

The two suspects were wearing black facemasks and multiple layers of clothes to avoid detection when they approached Jihad, prosecutors said, calling the killing \u201can orchestrated hit.\u201d<\/p>\n

A relative of Jihad\u2019s said the teen had engaged in an online feud before he was killed, although cops could not immediately confirm if that was the motive for the slaying.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a beef on the Internet,\u201d the relative said. \u201cThey were going back and forth and they\u2019re still trashing him now.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was no gang member,\u201d the relative said of Jihad. \u201cHe was a good boy.\u201d<\/p>\n

The two victims were both under the scaffolding but a few feet away from each other. The gunman was firing from east to west under the construction scaffolding, which stretches the length of three apartment buildings.<\/p>\n

Cops were alerted to the shooting by ShotSpotter, a system of highly sensitive microphones positioned in the area designed to detect gunfire. When they arrived, they found the two gunshot victims.<\/p>\n

The older victim was relaxing outside, smoking a cigar, when he was shot in the right hand and suffered a minor wound, his father, Clarence Gaines, told The News.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m grateful they didn\u2019t get my son in the body,\u201d Gaines, 79, said. \u201cIt\u2019s terribly sad about that little boy. He never got a chance to live his life.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The 15-year-old boy gunned down a block away from his Harlem home was trailed by two suspects wearing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":370609,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[262,263,266,85,267,75,84,83,9,24,264,12,63,261,265],"class_list":["post-370608","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-manhattan","tag-city","tag-county","tag-crime-and-public-safety","tag-latest-headlines","tag-local-news","tag-manhattan","tag-manhattan-headlines","tag-manhattan-news","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-county","tag-news","tag-nyc","tag-nyc-crime","tag-sub-county-region"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/370608","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=370608"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/370608\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/370609"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=370608"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=370608"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=370608"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}