A 15-year-old boy in Brooklyn was fatally shot on Tuesday afternoon at an entrance to his apartment building, the police said, sending a wave of fear through a housing complex with hundreds of units.
Police officers responded to a 911 call shortly after 3 p.m. on Tuesday and found the teenager, Heath Campbell, lying in the lobby of the 438-unit Rutland Road Houses in the East Flatbush neighborhood with a gunshot wound to the head, the department said.
Officers found a second victim, a 16-year-old boy who has not been identified, with a gunshot wound to the shoulder on the third floor of the complex, the police said. He was taken to Brookdale Hospital Medical Center and was in stable condition, according to the police. It was unclear whether there was any connection between the two victims.
An investigation into the shootings is continuing, and no arrests have been made, the department said on Wednesday.
At a vigil at the entrance to the building on Wednesday night, Mr. Campbell’s mother, Joy Smith, 46, said his death had left her feeling “torn apart.”
She said her son had been talking to friends in the lobby after school on Tuesday when he was killed.
“He stopped to talk to some friends and he did not make it upstairs,” she said. “My son was a good child. He didn’t deserve this.”
Ms. Smith said the police had not told her what the motive for the shooting may have been.
Louis Straker Jr., the chairman of the board of directors of the 67th Precinct Clergy Council, a local anti-violence group, said at the vigil that Rutland Road Houses is filled with young people, and that the city should do more to remove guns from the complex and provide resources for its residents.
“We would love to have community centers and other things that are happening here to occupy their hands,” said Mr. Straker, who is the pastor of Reflections Church in East Flatbush.
Leonardo Mason, 50, the manager of the complex, said he was in his office when he heard gunfire on Tuesday afternoon. The bullets shattered windows on either side of the lobby door, with a bullet hole the size of a fist punched through one pane of glass.
Mr. Mason said Heath and his mother had recently moved into the building. Several staff members at the complex took the day off on Wednesday, he said.
“It’s just traumatic,” Mr. Mason said. “A 15-year-old child? It’s traumatic.”
Chrisella Evans, 61, a retiree who has lived in the complex for eight years, said she heard gunshots and screams inside the building on Tuesday. She also saw a person covered in blood run by.
“The guy with all the blood, he ran into the elevator,” Ms. Evans said as she gathered with teary-eyed neighbors outside the building earlier on Wednesday. “I heard the guy screaming and yelling, the one who died.”
Ms. Evans said the killing had left her feeling paralyzed and unsure of what to do.
“You can say you’re going to move, but this stuff happens everywhere, all over the place,” she said.
