NYC teen hoops star fatally shot in front of sister after leaving relative’s home
The 17-year-old basketball player who was killed by a stray bullet on a Brooklyn sidewalk Wednesday was gunned down right in front of her sister — who relatives fear will be left traumatized after holding her younger sibling in her arms as she died.
“She saw it happen… she was right there,” the older brother of victim Shayma Roman told The Post Thursday.
“I don’t know how my sister is going to take this. She’s over by grandmother’s or over by the friends. She can’t come home. She can’t come back home, they shared a room, she can’t,” the brother, Shakem, said.
A male neighbor who witnessed the shooting said Roman’s older sister Tayma Roman clutched her and cried as she waited for an ambulance to arrive.
“[She] was holding her, saying, ‘Shy! Shy!’” the neighbor, who asked that his name be withheld, recalled.
“She was coming out of the building and barely made it to the stairs… That’s her blood,” he said, gesturing to a dark stain on the sidewalk.
“She walked out and got shot.”
The teen’s aunt was distraught when asked about the shooting.
“Only God could repay this justice,” the aunt said.
“There’s just no other way… We don’t have vengeance. Vengeance is not ours.”
Roman, who lives about a mile away on St. Mark’s Avenue, had just left her relative’s apartment building on Eastern Parkway near Rochester Avenue around 6:15 p.m. when she was struck twice by stray bullets fired by a pair of gunmen – once in the arm and once in the chest, law-enforcement sources and police said.
When cops responded to the scene, an area that’s home to two warring gangs, they found Roman face down on the pavement in a pool of blood next to empty beer bottles and a pair of dice, the sources said.
She was pronounced dead at Brookdale Hospital less than 20 minutes later.
Roman’s brother said the sisters were so close, everyone in the neighborhood called them twins.
“She and Tayma are like, together like, if one leaves out of the house, the other one will go with her. They was always together, 24/7. People always called them twins because they wear the same clothes,” Shakem said.
He added Roman was killed just over a month before her 18th birthday on October 30.
“She was the youngest. That’s my baby sister,” he said.
Roman’s stepfather Anthony sobbed as he remembered the teen’s personality.
“Sweet, loving, caring, feisty. She tell it like it is,” he said before breaking down into tears.
Roman was a student at Brooklyn Democracy Academy and was a member of the Lady Wolves basketball team. On the team’s Instagram page, she is shown in photos grinning alongside her teammates and singing with them in a video.
Another neighbor said Roman was beloved in the neighborhood and was known for her skills on the basketball court.
“She is so sweet and smart. She’s a star basketball player, a star student. She was really loved by everyone,” the neighbor said.
Cops have identified two suspects from surveillance footage but no arrests have been made.
Additional reporting by Larry Celona
