16-year-old boy shot and killed in SoHo 'wasn't a bad kid,' neighbors say
EAST FLATBUSH, Brooklyn -- A community in Brooklyn is outraged and heartbroken following the fatal shooting of a 16-year-old boy in SoHo on Tuesday.
In a breezeway at the Rutland Road Houses in East Flatbush, a candlelit memorial honors a young life extinguished by gunfire.
Makhi Brown, known to his friends and neighbors simply as "Kai,'" died Tuesday outside a school in SoHo when another teenager shot him in the head and fled on a Citi Bike.
Neighbor Ramel Williams told Eyewitness News that he practically raised the 16-year-old who excelled on the basketball court.
"He loved everybody. He's passionate. He has a good heart and that's what you need in life -- a good heart. He wasn't one of those hard head, fancy kids," Williams said.
According to investigators, Tuesday afternoon, some boys stepped in to break up fight between two groups of girls in a walkway connecting Spring Street and Dominick Street. Gunfire brought a fatal end to the altercation and to the life of a teenager from Flatbush.
"If he saw something was happening, he would step in and try to resolve the issue. Wasn't a bad kid, at all," said neighbor Lakesha Jenkins.
The search for Brown's killer is ongoing but back in Brooklyn, a tight-knit community of friends and neighbors tried to bring comfort to a grieving woman who lost her only son just days before Mother's Day.
"We lean on each other because we are one community and we have to love each other because without love we can't go on," neighbor Maria Watson said.
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