Javits Frimpong’s mother, who remains in Ghana, will be granted an immediate visa to travel to New York after her son was shot and killed on his way to school, Mayor Zohran Mamdani said on Saturday.
Police have yet to name a shooting suspect or identify a motive, and no arrests had been made as of Friday.
Frimpong, 15, had moved from Ghana to the US with his father, Thomas Frimpong, almost exactly one year before the shooting. Father and son had come in search of a better life. He was a 10th grader at Dream Yard Preparatory School and hoped to become a soccer player.
His father, Thomas Frimpong, 60, said he believed bullying at school was tied to his son’s death. The school principal had called him two days before the shooting to say that Javits was being bullied.
Two boys at the school had bullied Javits and were suspended for one week. Asked which students were troubling him, Javits told his father: 'Any time I'm going to lunch,' one of them bullies him.
On Monday, Javits was involved in an altercation with two other pupils at Dream Yard Preparatory. His friend Dalvi Rodriguez said: 'It was one altercation with two kids, but it was really not that serious.' It remains unclear whether the students in that incident were connected to the shooting.
On Thursday at around 9:25 a.m., Javits was walking to school when he was shot in the stomach at East 171 Street and Third Avenue in the Bronx. Surveillance video showed him, dressed in brown, sprinting through his Claremont neighbourhood as three teenagers in black clothing and face masks pursued him. One was directly behind him and two were across the street.
He collapsed at a stone wall at East 171 Street and Third Avenue after the shooting. Javits was first listed in stable condition, then died of his injuries.
Police are looking for three male suspects believed to be between 16 and 18 years old. The three teenagers, wearing black and face masks, were seen fleeing the scene, police said.
A memorial has grown near where Javits fell, at East 171st Street between Third and Fulton Avenues. People have left candles, incense, flowers and other mementos. On Thursday, friends, relatives and community members gathered for a candlelight vigil. Thomas Frimpong attended but was too heartbroken to speak. At a 5 p.m. vigil, members of the Latin American Chaplain Association prayed for justice.
Rodriguez remembered his friend as someone who avoided trouble. “He was a fun kid hanging around with because he would never look for trouble,” he said.
Mamdani said he spoke to President Trump by phone on Saturday about a visa for Javits’s mother. According to the mayor, Trump agreed to grant her an immediate visa so she could travel from Ghana to New York.
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