A fight on the schoolyard, an eruption of gunfire and a teenager accused of murder

The fight that ended the life of Evette Jeffrey started like so many others.

“It was a fist battle,” said Joseph Kenny, the chief of police investigators. “An old-school, schoolyard fist fight.”

He described the back story of the lost shot that Killed Evette, 16, near a Bronx school building on Monday – A shooting that left the fighting between rival gangs in the 1980s and 90s those teenagers in prison or death.

After the school was walked on Monday, a 14-year-old boy got a fight outside the building in the Morrisania district, Chief Kenny said at a press conference on Tuesday. The fight followed another earlier in the day. The boy walked away the apparent victor, the chef said.

But then another boy ran up and hit him. Someone gave the 14-year-old a gun and he shot three shots in a crowd, with the boy who had just hit him the likely target, said Chief Kenny. The shooter fled.

The 14-year-old boy was arrested on Tuesday when he tried to go into a taxi near where the shooting took place, the police said. He was accused of murder, the police said, as well as manslaughter and criminal possession of a weapon. The police did not release their name.

Evette was not involved in the dispute. She had gone to eat with her boyfriend and celebrated their birthday. Later they went on their way to the schoolyard with her scooter to see her friends when the fighting broke out.

When the shots were fired, she fell to the floor and shot in the head. It was 17:04; She was rushed to the Lincoln Hospital, where she would be pronounced dead within the hour.

“She was an innocent bystander,” said Chief Kenny.

The shooting took place near a building that houses three schools: De Dr. Richard Izquierdo Health and Science Charter School, Bronx Latin and the Bronx Career and College Preparatory High School.

The fighting there seem to be gang-related, the police said. One of the gangs uses the initials Kod

“That’s a new gang of the area,” said Chief Kenny.

The other is the forest above all gang, which has a criminal history. Three years ago, Two of his rankings were arrested and charged By selling dozens of semi -automatic pistols, revolvers and attack weapons, some from the Boshuizen in Morrisania, a public housing complex from which the gang assumed his name.

Evette’s mother, Kristen Abad, 30, spoke about her only child the day after her death.

“She was my baby girl,” she said. “She just turned 16.”

Mrs. Abad, who lives a few blocks from the schools in an apartment, said that she then ran up a neighbor and told members of her family her mother, at least one sister and a brother-in-law of the shooting. They woke up Mrs. Abad and the family ran outside, but by the time they arrived, Evette was already taken in an ambulance. They hurried to the hospital and 15 minutes later Mrs. Abad was told that her daughter was dead.

Mrs. Abad said she had taken her daughter from Bronx Latin because of violence there and transferred her to a nearby high school, where she had done much better.

“She had jumped and attacked several times,” said Mrs. Abad.

During school hours, the hilly block of Home Street is quiet outside the school building. On Tuesday, signs of the shooting even remained when a kind of normality returned inside. The voices of children came from the windows and mixed with the sounds of a nearby construction project. But police vehicles and school safety agents guarded the inputs and outputs.

Williams Miralda, 12, a seventh class at the Charter School, said he was on his way to football training on Monday when gunshots called. He ran in the other direction with a crowd, but returned and saw Evette lying on the floor.

“I couldn’t sleep at all, I kept waking up,” he said Tuesday. “I wanted to surrender. I saw a dead body.”

Williams said battles were common at the school, often drinks in the bathrooms during school hours or in nearby parks after the last day. Last year the fights were more common, he said, but this year they seemed more serious.

“I’m a little worried about it,” he said.

Since last year, the police have been involved in at least 22 incidents at the schools, according to the The quarterly school safety reports from the department. It was unclear what behavior encouraged the answers. But in most offenses, students were released to their schools for discipline and were not processed for an arrest or summons.

Matthew Delgado, 20, who lives near the school building, said it had a reputation as a hotbed for fighting. His younger brother had been there years ago to a school, but passed because he did not feel safe, he said.

Since then, he said, things have improved. “The area got much better,” Mr. Delgado said. “It became safer, calmer – but when you say that, things turn out to be really bad.”

Chris Jones, 33, a maintenance employee in a hiding place in the street, said that he had seen two fights in the area with school children in the past year, but nothing as violent or shocking as Monday’s shooting.

“It’s tragic,” he said. “The atmosphere is usually just children who are children, run around and make jokes.”

Troy Closson And Maria Cramer contributed reporting.