The innocent 16-year-old girl struck by a stray bullet as she rode a scooter outside a Bronx school playground was celebrating her one-year anniversary with her boyfriend when she was killed, her heartbroken family said Tuesday.
Evette Jeffrey had spent the afternoon with her beau when cops say a 14-year-old gunman opened fire into a crowd outside the Bronx Career and College Preparatory High School campus near Home St. and Tinton Ave. in Morrisania about 5 p.m. Monday.
“Her and her boyfriend were together for one year so they went out to eat and they went to the park and they just shot her,” the victim’s shocked aunt said as she broke down in tears Tuesday. “We’re just devastated right now.”
Cops caught the alleged shooter Tuesday morning and were questioning him. Charges weren’t immediately filed.
The Morris High School freshman was riding her kick scooter just outside the school playground when she heard a commotion and drew closer to the crowd to see what was going on, police sources said.
That’s when the boy opened fire into the crowd after being punched to the ground by a rival teen, police said.
Evette was struck in the head by a stray shot. Nobody else was hurt.
Evette turned 16 on April 13, her grandmother said.
“She was basically a girly girl,” said the grandmother, who wished not to be named. “She liked her pets. She liked music. She wanted to go to med school to be a technician. She said she just wanted to do something different.”
The apartment Evette shared with her mother and grandmother was near the shooting scene. Her grandmother heard the shots and immediately feared the worst.
“I tried to reach (Evette) … and there was no answer. She wasn’t connected (to wifi),” she said. “So I decided to come down and as I was getting ready to leave that’s when my neighbors came and told me that she died.”
A boy tried to pull Evette behind a brick wall for cover but a stray bullet struck her in the head, cops said.
“All I keep thinking is maybe if I came down five minutes earlier, ten minutes earlier,” the stunned grandmother said. “I would’ve seen her and said ‘Let’s go.’”
Evette and her boyfriend had just eaten at the Hibachi Grill & Supreme Buffet on E. 161st St. to celebrate their anniversary, the grandmother said.
The grandmother saw the boyfriend after the shooting Monday.
“He was just shaking,” the family matriarch said.
The teenage trigger man was aiming at an adolescent rival who had punched him moments earlier, NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch told reporters during a press conference with Mayor Adams at the scene Monday. Another teen handed the shooter the gun before the youthful killer fired three rounds into the crowd, police said.
“All the kids were running and screaming,” witness Julio Reyes told the Daily News Monday. “I ran down and they were pumping her chest. It was a head shot, she was not responding. An officer was shaking her head, the little girl was already gone,”
Medics transported Evette to Lincoln Hospital, where she died.
“The mom is absolutely inconsolable,” said Bronx Borough President Vanessa Gibson, who went to Lincoln Hospital to speak to Evette’s family on Monday night. “I’m so heartbroken. And we just recognized Mother’s Day yesterday and now this mother has lost her child.”
“She should be home right now eating dinner with her family but instead you’re talking about another child victim of gun violence,” Tisch said of Evette, calling her death “another senseless tragedy” in the city.
At some point before the shooting, the teen suspect had threatened his own mother with a gun, Mayor Adams said on X Monday evening.
“She was afraid of him,” Adams said in a video recorded inside his SUV. “This is what we’re up against.”
Adams said he plans to put out a video on social media providing parents with warning signs their child may be in possession of a gun to avert a tragedy like Monday’s from happening.
His plan was little comfort to Evette’s grandmother, who fears the next teen shooting is just around the corner.
“How many times does this have to happen?” she asked. “What is he gonna do? Wait for another time and another time and another time or we have a whole school (shot up)?”
So far this year, 28 youths under 18 have been shooting victims citywide, Tisch said. At the same time, 17 adolescents have been arrested for pulling triggers.
“These are babies killing babies and it has to stop,” Tisch said.
“We are losing a generation of our young people as victims and as shooters” Bronx District Attorney Darcel Clark added Monday. “Kids need to know that they should be kids. They should be picking up books and not guns. And we’re going to do everything we can to make sure we get that message out there.”
On Tuesday Evette’s mother and grandmother were trying their best to stay strong for the rest of their family.
“I left her a couple of hours ago — she was saying she was going to lay down,” the grandmother said about Evette’s mom. “I was okay until I got to (Evette’s) high school. I broke down at the school, knowing that she’s not there. I would see her when she’s switching classes. I’d be taking her lunch or whatever.”
“I walked her everyday. Picked her up pretty much everyday,” she added. “She hated that.”
Originally Published: May 13, 2025 at 11:31 AM EDT
