Shooting leaves 13-year-old Queens boy brain-dead as family weighs ending life support
The family of a 13-year-old boy who was shot outside a Dunkin’ store in Queens this week is weighing whether to take him off life support as police look for the shooter, his mother said Wednesday.
Vilene Griffith told Gothamist she may have to make the hardest decision of her life as her youngest son Sanjay Samuel is brain-dead at Cohen Children’s Medical Center, where he was taken in critical condition after the shooting in Cambria Heights on Monday.
“I’m speechless,” she said in a phone interview, adding that she was getting ready to return to the hospital. “Why Sanjay? Why my boy?”
Griffith said her son had been on his way to school when
The corner near the Dunkin’ is a gathering place for students at several local high schools, according to local business workers, and features multiple bus stops. A 13-year-old student from one of those schools was
Griffith said her son never felt unsafe near their Laurelton home, located less than 2 miles from where he was gunned down. NYPD data shows no shootings were recorded through Sept. 21 in the
Samuel had just started his first year of high school, and his mother said she had just finished filling out forms so he could play basketball there — his greatest passion besides music. She said everyone who knows Samuel is struggling to cope with his prognosis, including his two older brothers and two older sisters.
“His first-grade teacher, his second-grade teacher, his third-grade teacher, everyone is calling us for Sanjay,” Griffith said. “ Why you had to go and get a gun, and why you have to shoot Sanjay to kill him? What was Sanjay’s last word?”
