Javits Frimpong came from Ghana to the Bronx a year ago to live with his father and build a better life. On Oct. 29 he was shot in the abdomen on his way to school, and five days later no one has been arrested.
He was 15. The NYPD says the shooting happened just before 9:30 a.m. at East 171st Street and Crotona Place, in the Claremont section. He ran about a block before he collapsed, and he died at St. Barnabas Hospital. Police are looking for three males, possibly teenagers, last seen heading south on Fulton Avenue toward Crotona Park in black clothing and blue surgical masks.
His father, Thomas Frimpong, told local television that he believes the killing is tied to bullying. He said the school’s principal had called him days earlier to say two students who had been bullying Javits were suspended for a week. The family says Javits had complained about the bullying at DreamYard Preparatory School. Police have not said what motive they are investigating, and no one has been charged, so the father’s account is his belief, not a finding.
That is where the questions start. A child reported harassment. The school acted, by its own account, with a suspension. Then the boy was shot a short walk from his school. What the school knew, what it told the family, and what protection it offered after the suspensions are things only the school and the Department of Education can answer. The NYPD is seeking school records on the bullying incidents, the Amsterdam News reports.
The Ghana Diaspora Public Affairs Collective is asking for three things: a full NYPD investigation, a public Education Department report on earlier bullying complaints and the safety measures taken, and a meeting between city officials and African immigrant leaders. “A child who reports bullying should be protected,” the group said. The government of Ghana has said it will work with U.S. authorities to pursue justice. The Amsterdam News also reports that Mayor Zohran Mamdani agreed to help get a visa for Javits’s mother, who has not been able to travel from Ghana to bury her son.
For Black immigrant families, a case like this is easy to lose. A teenager from West Africa has no long file of public advocacy behind him, and a parent who is still abroad cannot stand outside the precinct or the school. Neighbors told reporters the answer is more afterschool programs. That may be true, and it does not excuse the city from explaining what happened to this boy.
The city owes the Frimpong family two things now: an arrest, and an honest account of what it did after Javits asked for help. The first test is whether the school records the NYPD is seeking are handed over, and whether the Education Department shares what they show with his parents.
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