Brooklyn teen ‘sorry’ for stray bullet shooting of 14-year old outside school
A teen gunman charged Wednesday with attempted murder for the February stray bullet shooting of a 14-year-old outside a Brooklyn school told cops he wishes he could apologize to his young victim, prosecutors said.
John Felton, 18, was cuffed for the Feb. 28 shooting following class dismissal outside the Boys and Girls High School in which 14-year-old student Darius Little was shot in the ankle.
“The bullet was not intended for you — that is what I would tell him,” Felton told investigators following his arrest Tuesday, according to prosecutors. He also said that he would say “sorry” to Little if he could.
Felton and an accomplice were walking down Utica Ave. near Fulton St. in Bedford-Stuyvesant when Felton opened fire at his intended targets on the other side of the street, said cops.
Felton told police that when he started firing, he believed his life was in danger.
“I just turn around and just pop,” he said, according to a law enforcement source.
Felton shot into a “crowded sidewalk” striking Little, who still has a limp nearly three months later, said prosecutors.
Little took cover after getting hit in the ankle. He was taken to Maimonides Medical Center and released two days later.
After the shooting, Felton fled to North Carolina, prosecutors said. He told cops who arrested him that he fled south to take care of his aunt, who he said was herself a gunshot victim, according to a law enforcement source.
Felton returned to New York. He took a swing at one of the cops who took him into custody at his Brooklyn home on Tuesday, resulting in a resisting arrest charge, prosecutors said.
The District Attorney’s Office asked for $500,000 bail in the case. But Brooklyn Criminal Court Judge Simiyon Haniff, seeing Felton’s parents in the courtroom and noting it was the young man’s first arrest, set bail at $100,000.
“That kid had nothing to do with this. He didn’t deserve this. He was just trying to go to school. He wasn’t part of this. That’s not right,” Haniff told Felton in court. “I know the streets are crazy right now. Everybody knows that.”
Little, who escaped with his life, was luckier than two girls were killed this year in separate stray bullet shootings in the Bronx.
Kyhara Tay, just 11 years old, was killed Monday when she was hit by a stray bullet fired in a botched drive-by shooting.
In April, innocent bystander 16-year-old Angellyh Yambo was murdered by 17-year-old gunman Jerimiah Ryan when he opened fire outside a Bronx school, cops said.