‘He’s just a kid.”
Corey Dunton Sr. offered these words after his 16-year-old son, Corey Jr., was arrested for the Saturday night shooting at the Bryant Park ice rink.
Know who else was “just a kid”? Adonis Mera, the 14-year-old who was shot in the back while out skating — and may never walk again. In other words, what we have here is one city teen shooting another teen guilty of nothing more than innocent fun.
It’s tragic when young people find themselves caught up in a life that involves them with violence and the police force. But as we should have learned long before Saturday, when someone picks up a gun — even if he is still a kid himself — he becomes just as lethal a threat to all those around him, including other kids, as any adult.
Between teen shooter and teen victims stands the NYPD. Not that it gets them much thanks. Back in March, the police shooting of 16-year-old Kimani Gray sparked weeks of protests in Brooklyn. Two undercover cops fired at and killed Gray after he’d pointed a .38-caliber revolver at them.
Then in August, another 14-year-old, Shaaliver Douse, was shot and killed by police after ignoring orders to drop his weapon. Cops did so as Douse chased and shot at another teen in The Bronx with gun drawn at 3 a.m.
Douse’s mother also described her son as “a good kid in his own way” — even though he’d been arrested for attempted murder earlier in the year.
The point is that we have children in this city at both ends of the gun barrel. In the Bryant Park case, the 16-year-old accused of pulling the trigger will be charged as an adult for attempted murder, assault and related charges — which may put him away for a long time. At the other end we have the 14-year-old who may be permanently injured for life.
Worth remembering next time you hear someone try to explain away a teen caught with a gun as “just a kid.”