Boy, 16, fatally shot in Bronx after three recent gun arrests: NYPD

A 16-year-old boy was fatally shot on a Bronx street three weeks after being arrested for carrying a gun, police said Thursday.

Nisayah was shot in the chest and head on E. 187th St. near Clinton Ave. in Crotona about 12:50 p.m. Wednesday, cops said. EMS rushed him to Saint Barnabas Hospital but he couldn’t be saved.

Nisayah Sanchez is the third teen killed in the city in two days.

A 23-year-old man showed up at St. Barnabas Hospital a short time later with gunshot wounds to his left arm and right foot, police said. Cops determined he was wounded in the same shooting that killed Nisayah. He is expected to recover.

NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea said Nisayah had a criminal record “as long as my arm.”

“Look at this child — and he’s a child,” Shea said on PIX11 Thursday morning. “He’s 16 years old and he’s arrested for a gun weeks before. Once before that he was arrested for a gun. A month before that he was arrested for a gun.”

“How do you have a 16-year-old arrested in a month three times with guns?” Shea said. “And I’m not talking about the times he was arrested for slashing people with a machete and with a dagger.”

Nisayah and the older victim were standing on E. 187th St. when two men exited a gray Honda Accord and opened fire, hitting them multiple times, cops said. The gunmen drove off and have not been caught.

Detectives on Thursday were trying to determine if the shooters were targeting Sanchez or the 23-year-old victim, who lives nearby, a police source said.

Nisayah is a member of the Rey Way crew, which is affiliated with the Crips, according to the source. He had a dozen arrests on his record on charges including weapon possession, assault, grand larceny, criminal mischief and unauthorized use of a vehicle, the source said.

On September 5, Sanchez was arrested for gun possession in the Bronx after he was seen with a .38-caliber pistol sticking out of his waistband at Park Ave. and E. 181st St., just a few blocks from where he was killed, according to a criminal complaint.

Cops say they saw him try to hide the gun under a bush when they approached. The gun had three rounds in it, officials said.

A judge ordered Nisayah released without bail during his arraignment the next day, according to court records. The Bronx DA had requested $45,000 bail because of his prior arrests, a law enforcement source said.

Shea blamed the state’s bail reform legislation and the “Raise the Age” law, which diverts 16-year-olds charged with misdemeanors to Family Court, for Nisayah’s quick release.

“We are not helping these kids by putting them back on the streets,” Shea said. “In fact what we’re actually doing is encouraging others to carry guns — because you have to because no one is being removed from the street.”

Attempts to reach Nisayah’s family for comment were unsuccessful Thursday.

Five hours after Nisayah was killed, 16-year-old Jaden Turnage, was shot in the chest on Monroe St. near Classon Ave. in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, cops said. The shooter chased him for about a block before firing the fatal bullet, witnesses told police.

“I wished we had half as many press conferences on (youths being murdered) than we had photo ops at Rikers Island,” Shea said. “That is the real crisis in New York City and it is directly tied to laws that have been passed in the last two years.”

“My question is simple, how many kids have to die before we fix these laws?” Shea added.

The two shootings came a day after 16-year-old Cahlil Pennington was shot to death at the corner of Miller and Pitkin Aves. in East New York near the Florentino Plaza Houses.

Police have made no arrests in the three slayings.