Thomas Frimpong remembers the day he picked up his son, Javits, at Kennedy Airport in October last year after Javits flew from Ghana to continue his education in the United States.
“He was very, very, very excited,” Mr. Frimpong said.
Javits recorded the milestone in his diary shortly after he arrived. “I am from Ghana,” he wrote. “School has been good since I came to the United States.”
Just over a year later, on Oct. 29, Javits, 15, was fatally shot while walking to school in the Bronx.
A 17-year-old was arrested and charged on Wednesday with his murder.
The police said that the teenager, whose name was not publicly released because of his age, was taken into custody in the Bronx early Wednesday. He was also charged with manslaughter and criminal possession of a weapon, the police said. It was not yet clear whether the boys knew each other.
The death of Javits shook the tightknit Ghanaian community in the Bronx and students at Dreamyard Preparatory School, where he was a sophomore.
At a news conference after the arrest with the Rev. Al Sharpton at his National Action Network headquarters in Harlem, Mr. Frimpong, a taxi driver, blinked back tears, bit his fist and eventually collapsed into a chair from emotion.
Javits’s mother, Doris Adu-Gyamfi, who received a visa from President Trump to travel from Ghana after the shooting, was also crying. “I need justice for my child,” she said. “He was my only child.”
Javits’s sister, Millicent Frimpong, said on Wednesday that Police Department detectives had alerted Mr. Frimpong to the arrest before it was announced publicly.
“I was hoping to see a smile on my dad’s face,” Ms. Frimpong, 33, said. “He did say, ‘Thank you, Lord.’”
The boy’s relatives said that Javits had dreams of joining the military after high school, following in the footsteps of his older siblings, including Ms. Frimpong, who they said had served in the Army, and of then becoming a doctor.
“Javits wanted to serve so bad,” Ms. Frimpong said. “He was so ready that he made me save my uniform for him.”
His cousin Ernest Agyapong noted the coincidence that they were grieving his death on Veterans Day.
“This is a moment no family ever wishes to experience,” Mr. Agyapong said.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani said he spoke with Javits’s parents on Wednesday and expressed the city’s commitment to seeking justice for their son.
“We are thankful to the men and women of the N.Y.P.D. for their hard work in ensuring that there was an arrest in this case,” Mr. Mamdani said at the New York City Veterans Day Parade. “We now continue to look forward with the family.”
The police said they expected to make additional arrests, Mr. Sharpton said.
William K. Rashbaum, Chelsia Rose Marcius and Miles G. Cohen contributed reporting.
The post He Was Killed at Age 15. Now a 17-Year-Old Is Arrested in His Murder. appeared first on New York Times.
