The 15-year-old boy gunned down a block away from his Harlem home was trailed by two suspects wearing clothing they could easily discard in what prosecutors called an “orchestrated hit,” officials said Sunday.
The teen arrested for the death of Jihad Pack was ordered held without bail Friday while a second suspect — the actual triggerman — remained at large, officials said. The 15-year-old suspect’s name is not being released because of his age.
Prosecutors from the Manhattan District Attorney’s office said the arrested teen stalked Pack with the gunman and hid behind a car as the gunman fired off four rounds from a .9-mm pistol, killing Pack and hitting a 57-year-old innocent bystander around 6:20 p.m. Wednesday, prosecutors said.
Pack was shot one door down from the building where he lived in NYCHA’s Martin Luther King Jr. Towers. The mortally wounded teen staggered to the walkway outside his building on W. 115th St. near Malcolm X Blvd., where a family friend found him bleeding out on the pavement, his life ebbing away.
“I took off my shirt to put pressure on the wound. He was saying, ‘Please! Please, I don’t want to die!’” said the friend, 28, who gave her name as Kadisha. “I was the last person he spoke to. His last words were, ‘Kadisha, I don’t want to die.’”
Medics rushed both victims to Mt. Sinai Morningside, where Jihad died.
Kerry Burke / New York Daily News
Jihad Pack, 15, was fatally shot and a 57-year-old man sitting in a plastic chair was wounded in a shooting on W. 115th St. near Malcolm X Blvd. inside NYCHA’s Martin Luther King Jr. Towers on Wednesday, Oct. 7, 2026. (Kerry Burke / New York Daily News)
After the incident, the shooter passed off the weapon to the arrested 15-year-old boy as both of them fled in different directions.
The accomplice fled north up 5th Ave. and turned onto E 116th St., where he changed his clothes into a thin gray sweatsuit while still wearing the same black mask and shoes and clutching the gun in his waistband.
Responding officers caught up to him and recognized the outline of a gun in the teen’s waistband, even though he told cops that he was “shooting hoops,” according to court documents.
He was apprehended by cops after a foot pursuit and was charged with murder, attempted murder, and criminal possession of a weapon.
Cops recovered the pistol that had a bullet in the chamber and seven in the magazine. The pistol was described as a high-capacity magazine, capable of holding 12 bullets, prosecutors said.
The unapprehended shooter took off heading towards 5th Ave. into the Taft Houses development and remained at large Sunday.
The two suspects were wearing black facemasks and multiple layers of clothes to avoid detection when they approached Jihad, prosecutors said, calling the killing “an orchestrated hit.”
A relative of Jihad’s said the teen had engaged in an online feud before he was killed, although cops could not immediately confirm if that was the motive for the slaying.
“It was a beef on the Internet,” the relative said. “They were going back and forth and they’re still trashing him now.”
“He was no gang member,” the relative said of Jihad. “He was a good boy.”
The two victims were both under the scaffolding but a few feet away from each other. The gunman was firing from east to west under the construction scaffolding, which stretches the length of three apartment buildings.
Cops were alerted to the shooting by ShotSpotter, a system of highly sensitive microphones positioned in the area designed to detect gunfire. When they arrived, they found the two gunshot victims.
The older victim was relaxing outside, smoking a cigar, when he was shot in the right hand and suffered a minor wound, his father, Clarence Gaines, told The News.
“I’m grateful they didn’t get my son in the body,” Gaines, 79, said. “It’s terribly sad about that little boy. He never got a chance to live his life.”
