Javits Frimpong, a 15 year old who moved to New York from Ghana just one year ago, was shot and killed Thursday morning while walking to school in the Bronx. His father says the teen had been dealing with bullying at school.
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Police say Javits was shot in the abdomen just before 9:30 a.m. near East 171st Street and Crotona Place in the Claremont section of the Bronx, about two blocks from his home. He ran about a block before he collapsed. Officers rushed him to St. Barnabas Hospital. Police first said he was in stable condition, but he later died.
No arrests have been made. Police are searching for three suspects who were last seen running down Fulton Avenue in black clothing, two of them wearing surgical masks. Surveillance video shows a person in a black hoodie, black sweatpants and a mask running from the area. Neighbors have since left candles at the corner where he fell.
Javits Frimpong came to the United States in 2025 to live with his father, Thomas Frimpong, a 60 year old taxi driver who moved to New York from Ghana in 2000. His mother is still in Ghana. Thomas woke his son up for school before he left home that morning. Later, DreamYard Preparatory School called to say Javits had not shown up. Then the principal called back to tell Thomas his son had been shot. By the time he got to the hospital, his son was gone.
“He’s my everything,” Thomas told reporters. “I’m here with him alone. He came from Africa just one year ago.”
Thomas says the trouble started at lunch. Javits told him that one student in particular bullied him every time he went to the cafeteria, and that he had reported it several times. “He has been telling the principal, he’s been telling the boy is disturbing him,” Thomas said.
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Three days before the shooting, the principal called Thomas to say two boys had fought with Javits at school and both were suspended for a week. Thomas says the principal told him Javits was not to blame and had been defending himself. Thomas believes the trouble at school may be connected to his son’s death. Police have not confirmed any link between the bullying and the killing of Javits Frimpong, and they have not said whether he was targeted.
Thomas described his son as a quiet kid who never missed school and spent his evenings at home on his phone. Every night, Javits came downstairs to open the door when his father got home. “The school can testify my son is always quiet. Always,” Thomas said. “My son was precious very clever.”
When Thomas called Javits’s mother in Ghana with the news, she was heartbroken. He said she told him she would not believe her son was dead until she saw his body.
Thomas is begging the people responsible to turn themselves in. “I don’t think they are going to go free for what they have done to an innocent child,” he said.
A cousin has started a GoFundMe to help the family cover funeral and burial costs. DreamYard Preparatory School and the city’s Department of Education have not answered questions about the bullying reports.
