Theophilus Samuel was already at work when the call arrived.
Monday morning had begun like any other. Mr. Samuel, 55, had commuted to his job at Zucker Hillside Hospital in Queens, where he changes linens and prepares rooms for patients.
It was still early when his phone lit up with a call from his daughter and a son. Their voices were urgent: Sanjay, Mr. Samuel’s 13-year-old, had been shot while he was walking to school in the Cambria Heights section of Queens.
Mr. Samuel left work and ran to Cohen Children’s Medical Center, where his youngest boy lay in a bed, surrounded by doctors, in the emergency room. Sanjay Samuel had been struck in the back of the head, his father soon learned. The boy’s brain was swelling, and he had suffered extensive tissue damage. His chance of survival was slim.
On Wednesday afternoon, after spending two days on life support in the intensive care unit, Sanjay was pronounced dead, having lost all brain activity, according to Mr. Samuel and the police.
Joseph Kenny, the chief of detectives at the Police Department, said in a Tuesday briefing that the shooting had been gang related and that it had been sparked by a fight between Sanjay and a 16-year-old boy that the police had identified as a possible shooter.
The police on Thursday were searching for the boy, who lives near the scene of the shooting and is known to be a “troublemaker in the area,” Chief Kenny said. Sanjay was not in the police’s criminal gang database, nor did he have a criminal record, he said.
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