A 15-year-old boy was charged with second-degree manslaughter on Thursday in connection with the fatal shooting of a 14-year-old boy inside a Queens apartment this week, according to the police.
The victim, Jamuri Mezar, was struck in the head by a bullet inside his home Wednesday evening and pronounced dead there, the police said. The 15-year-old, whose name has not been released by the authorities because he is a minor, was taken into custody by the police on Thursday and also charged with criminal possession of a weapon.
The boys had been playing with a gun at the victim’s home in Jamaica, Queens, when it went off, according to a law enforcement official with knowledge of the shooting who was not authorized to discuss it publicly. The 15-year-old brought the gun to Jamuri’s apartment in the Norman Towers complex, where they and a group of other teenagers played with it until it suddenly went off, the official said.
Police officers responding to a call about a shooting arrived at the apartment at around 5 p.m. and found Jamuri with a gunshot wound in his head. Emergency medical workers came soon after and pronounced him dead, the police said.
At least two of the teenagers fled the apartment immediately after the shooting, the official said. Many details of the shooting, including how the gun went off and who had been holding it at the time, are unclear.
The 15-year-old boy was arrested on Thursday just before noon.
Jamuri was the second teenager to be fatally shot in New York City this week. Just one day earlier, Darrell Harris, 17, was shot and killed inside a Bronx park after getting into an argument during a water gun fight.
Shootings among minors ticked upward at the start of this year, even as overall shootings in the city declined.
In the first quarter of 2025, the number of juvenile shooting victims increased by 133 percent, compared with the same period in 2018, according to data provided by the Police Department. The number of juvenile perpetrators increased by 112 percent during that period, compared with 2018.
In those same three months, the Police Department recorded the fewest overall shootings of any first quarter since it began recording crime statistics in 1994.
Chelsia Rose Marcius contributed reporting.
Maia Coleman is a reporter for The Times covering the New York Police Department and criminal justice in the New York area.
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