When a 16-year-old boy was found unconscious in a Harlem park last summer, blocks from his home, the police were unsure what had happened to him.
He was taken to a hospital, where he later died. His death was ruled a homicide.
On Wednesday, more than a year later, prosecutors said that the boy, Tresaun Clements, was the victim of a gang feud that gripped Central Harlem last year, spilling into public view in shootings at delis and in the middle of streets.
In Tresaun’s case, several members of the “OY” gang approached him last June and asked if he was from a rival gang’s territory, prosecutors said. After demanding that he hand over his belongings, one of them punched Tresaun in the face, causing him to fall backward and hit his head. He slipped into a coma and died weeks later, according to prosecutors.
The assailants were mistaken — Tresaun was not affiliated with any gang, prosecutors said — but they celebrated his death in a music video posted on YouTube.
The gang members “seemed to relish” their violent acts, Alvin L. Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney, said at a Wednesday news conference announcing charges against them. They were “bragging” and showed no remorse, he said.
“Callous doesn’t even begin to capture it,” Mr. Bragg said.
The defendants, 13 members of the OY gang, were indicted in State Supreme Court in Manhattan and charged collectively with 66 counts, including second-degree attempted murder, first-degree attempted assault and second-degree criminal possession of a weapon.
The charges were announced days after the Police Department recorded the first 12-day stretch without a homicide in the city since 2015. There has also been a downward trend in shootings this year: The department announced on Monday that between Jan. 1 and Dec. 1, the city had the lowest number of shooting incidents and victims since 1994.
Crime in the city had reached record lows before 2020, but the coronavirus pandemic caused a spike in violent crime. In recent years, crime rates have been receding.
When shootings increased during the pandemic, the police and prosecutors turned to gang takedowns — a tactic that has been criticized as overly sweeping — as a way to curb the violence. The authorities have continued to focus on gangs even as crime has fallen, crediting the drop to what they have said is targeted enforcement.
In 2024, Mr. Bragg’s office indicted 30 people who prosecutors said were responsible for half of the shootings in Washington Heights and Inwood that year, which resulted in seven deaths. In April, the office charged 16 more people, saying they had committed 21 shootings in East Harlem during a six-month gang war.
In July, the Brooklyn district attorney’s office announced the indictment of nine people who prosecutors said were members of a gang responsible for 10 shootings, including one that was fatal.
On Wednesday, prosecutors said that the indicted members of the OY gang had been feuding with other gangs that were primarily based in four public housing developments in Central Harlem and Upper Manhattan. The OY members would walk around in their rivals’ territories and seek targets, according to prosecutors, who listed other violent acts linked to the defendants.
In one episode in September 2024, two of the defendants traveled to West 163rd Street and Broadway — rival territory — with a loaded gun and approached a parked car with someone inside. The person in the car began shooting at them and drove off, prosecutors said, at which point one of the defendants walked into the middle of the street and fired three shots at the car.
And earlier this year, three of the defendants smuggled two scalpel blades through security at the Manhattan Criminal Courthouse, prosecutors said. When they spotted two rivals, they followed them out of a courtroom and to an elevator bank, where they blocked their path. The defendants then surrounded their rivals and slashed them, according to prosecutors.
Kirsten Noyes contributed research.
Hurubie Meko is a Times reporter covering criminal justice in New York, with a focus on the Manhattan district attorney’s office and state courts.
The post 13 Charged in Gang-Related Attack That Killed 16-Year-Old in Harlem appeared first on New York Times.
