The family of Javits Frimpong joined civil rights leaders and Ghanaian officials Wednesday to demand accountability for his death, saying questions remain even after police arrested a 17-year-old in the case.
Javits, 15, was shot in the stomach on Oct. 29 while walking to school in the Bronx. Police took the teen suspect into custody at his Bronx home Wednesday morning and charged him with murder, according to the NYPD. He has not been named because he is a minor. Investigators are searching for two others, PIX11 reported.
Speakers at the news conference, held at the National Action Network House of Justice in Harlem, said the arrest doesn’t settle their questions: how Javits’ school handled the bullying his family says he faced, and how a teenager got a gun.
“We are not going to let the Javits case rest until those who used the guns are prosecuted and where they got the guns from are also prosecuted,” said the Rev. Al Sharpton, the network’s founder.
Javits’ father, Thomas Frimpong, said he was glad someone had been charged in his son’s killing. The room broke into chants of “Justice for Javits!”
“I only have one child,” said Javits’s mother, Doris Adu Gyamfi, before collapsing to the floor.
Gyamfi traveled from Ghana after Mayor Zohran Mamdani asked President Donald Trump to arrange a visa to memorialize her son.
“She didn’t come to America to celebrate her son graduating from high school, … to watch him fulfill his dreams,” said Ben Crump, the civil rights attorney representing the family. “She came to America to bury her 15-year-old baby.”
Bullying and school accountability
Javits, a 10th-grader at DreamYard Preparatory School, had told his father other students were bothering him but said, “Dad, I’m OK,” the Associated Press reported. Three days before the shooting, the school’s principal told Thomas that two students had been suspended for a week for bullying his son, according to PIX11.
Neither the Department of Education nor DreamYard immediately responded to questions Wednesday about when staff learned of the bullying, whether they could confirm the suspensions, and what steps they took to support Javits afterward.
At Wednesday’s press conference, Crump declined to say whether bullying was a motive, noting the case remains under investigation. Police have said they are investigating bullying and robbery as potential motives. It was not immediately clear whether the arrested teen knew Javits or attended his school.
Sharpton said the city’s public school system has a responsibility to help African immigrant children integrate and address bullying. He also called for the community to confront bullying and violence, saying disagreements should not be settled through shootings.
Gugu Makhari, community liaison for the African Advisory Council who lives in the Bronx, called bullying a “pandemic” in the borough and said it often starts at home.
“This bullying doesn’t just start with the children. It starts with us as adults,” Makhari told Epicenter NYC. “I’ve been in corporations, even in our organizations, we see adults bullying adults. So what do we expect from children?”
She called for support groups where parents and children in the community talk openly about bullying. She also urged the governor to “use every muscle” to prevent more violence by investing in resources that could help address factors contributing to youth violence, including transit and food access.
“Our children deserve to see their dreams come true,” Makhari said. “They deserve to be doctors, lawyers. They deserve to grow up and be old and have their own children get married … [but] their lives are cut short because of senseless acts.”
‘A life that matters’
Javits’ funeral is scheduled for Friday, Nov. 20. Further details are forthcoming, Crump said.
“Today, we ask that the unfathomable tragedy of our son, our brother and our friend, Javits Frimpong, should not be reduced to another headline or statistics,” said Ghana’s Ambassador to the United Nations, Samuel Yao Kumah. “Behind this tragedy is a family, a community and a life that matters.”
Thomas Frimpong remembered how excited Javits was when he arrived from Ghana last year and his father picked him up at John F. Kennedy International Airport. Javits’ sister, Millicent Boateng, said he had dreamed of serving in the military, as she had, or becoming a physician.
She also read from a journal he kept after arriving. “School has been good since I came to the United States,” he wrote.
