Cops are grilling two people with information about the brazen, execution-style shooting of high school hoops star Tayshana “Chicken” Murphy, law enforcement sources told The Post today.
This comes after one of the city’s top female high-school hoops stars was hunted down and fatally shot in her Harlem building yesterday by a thug who apparently mistook her for a male rival because of her athletic build and the hoodie over her head, sources said.
Murphy, 18, a Murry Bergtraum HS guard who had transferred to the school for her senior year, had been hanging out with her mother, brother and pals outside the Grant Houses where they live at 3170 Broadway at around 4:15 a.m. when two men approached, law-enforcement sources and relatives said.
Both thugs were from the Manhattanville projects a few blocks north, and one of them had been assaulted at the Grant Houses earlier in the night — an incident that had nothing to do with Murphy — during one of several run-ins between the projects’ rival factions, the sources said.
Suddenly, one of the goons yelled, “That’s him! That’s him!” indicating the solidly built, 5-foot-7 Murphy, who had her hood up, the sources said.
The duo then whipped out at least one handgun, prompting the terrified Murphy to scream, “I’m not with that!’’ and start running.
The panicked athlete ran into the building and made it up to the fourth floor before the gunman caught up to her and shot her three times, in the chest, hip and hand.
Cops are reviewing video from the building that caught some of the violence, sources said.
Murphy had once attended Bishop Loughlin HS in Brooklyn, but left after getting into a fight during a boy’s basketball game.