A teenage boy was shot dead in a Bronx park on Tuesday after a chaotic water-gun fight devolved into real bullets, leaving the boy’s heartbroken mother mourning the loss of her second son to city violence.
Darrell Harris, 17, was blasted in the head during a fight that erupted when another boy doused him with water from a gel-pellet gun in Starlight Park around 8 p.m., as a heat wave sent temperatures in the Big Apple near 100 degrees, according to police.
According to sources, Harris charged at him before the gel-pellet shooter’s nearby friend opened fire with a real gun.
According to sources, Harris was shot in the back of the head and right arm as a crowd of teenagers gathered around them near Sheridan Boulevard and 173rd Street in the Crotona Park section of the Bronx.
Harris’s bereaved mother told reporters Wednesday that her son, who rarely left the house, promised to be home at 9 p.m.
“That is the most shocking part of it because he is not really outside,” Kelli Lewis, 48, explained. “The one time he does ask to go outside and this transpires.”
“He told me he was going to the park because his friends were having a water gun fight.”
“It is hot. “Kids want to play in the water,” she explained.
The shattered mother stated that the shocking shooting occurred while her other son was celebrating his 20th birthday.
Her oldest child, Jamal Hunter, 27, was fatally shot on a Bronx street in 2021.
Lewis claimed Harris attended Bronx Leadership Academy High School and had no enemies.
“He was not a child who ran around the streets or hung out. “That is not who he was,” she stated.
According to cops, the gunman, who was possibly wearing a ski mask, fled with his friend wielding a water gun.
According to sources, investigators discovered a knife, four shell casings, and multiple water guns at the blood-soaked scene.
Harris was taken to NYC Health and Hospitals/Jacobi in critical condition, but he later died.
The shooter was still on the loose Tuesday afternoon.
Lewis and her remaining son were devastated for his birthday.
“That’s what these kids don’t realize when they pick up these weapons,” she told me.
“You take someone’s life, but your quick decision has an impact on the entire family. That was not necessary.”
