Family Of Brighton Beach Shooting Victim Tysha Jones Speaks Out, Calls For Justice
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) -- As the investigation continues into what sparked a deadly shooting on Brighton Beach, relatives of the 16-year-old victim are speaking out.
Sixteen-year old Tysha Jones was enjoying a day on Brighton Beach and a break from the sweltering heat Thursday afternoon when gunshots and the chaos that followed broke out on the boardwalk.
Police say at least one suspect walked up from the beach to the boardwalk and opened fire shortly after 5pm.
1010 WINS' Steve Sandberg reports: Tysha Jones' Family Calling For Justice
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"It turned into rapid fire and people were screaming, running in every direction," said witness Michael Tracy. "No where to go."
Tysha and four young men sitting on a bench were all hit.
The high school senior from Harlem was shot in the midsection and did not survive.
"She was just an innocent bystander," said Tysha's mother Cynthia Jones. "She didn't have anything to do with nothing."
Tysha's mother says she reluctantly let her daughter, the youngest of three children, go to the beach to beat the heat. It's a decision she now regrets.
"You're never expecting nothing to ever happen at no beach. Somebody pulling out guns with kids and everybody out there having fun, I never thought that," said Cynthia.
"She is really strict with her kids and to see her last daughter go, it's really hurting her," said family friend Diane Tice.
Relatives say she wanted to go to medical and become a child nutritionist. A makeshift memorial has been placed in front of her home in Harlem.
As officers stood guard over the littered crime scene Friday morning, detectives tell CBS 2 it's still unclear if anyone in Tysha's' group was the shooter's intended target.
Three of the men who were shot are in stable condition. The fourth, also shot in the midsection, is in critical.
As the crime scene investigation continues, so does the search for a suspect. The NYPD will not say if this shooting was gang related.
