Arrest in Kingsbridge teen’s death

A 17-year-old boy has been arrested and charged in the fatal shooting of 16-year-old Christopher Redding in Kingsbridge. Three additional suspects, two males and one female, remain at large as the investigation continues.

The teen was taken into custody Feb. 14 within the confines of the 50th Precinct and charged with murder, two counts of attempted murder, manslaughter, two counts of assault and three counts of criminal possession of a loaded firearm.

Redding, a sophomore at John F. Kennedy High School, was killed shortly after 5 p.m. on Feb. 11 on West 238th Street near the McDonald’s at 5765 Broadway. A 13-year-old girl and a 15-year-old boy, both shot in the leg, are expected to survive.

Police said the gunfire followed a dispute inside the restaurant that escalated onto the street.

“Some witnesses started saying it was over something very small — over ice cream or over spilled food — and it escalated,” Capt. Amadeo Oktrova, commanding officer of the 50th Precinct, said.

According to police, one of the girls involved in the argument left the restaurant and returned with a group of masked males. A fight broke out. Shots were fired minutes later.

“The fight spilled outside of McDonald’s, and unfortunately when they made it to Broadway, shots were fired and three of our young people were shot,”Oktrova said.

The first 911 call came in at 5:12 p.m. An employee at 238 Corner Bodega, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said he stepped outside moments after the shooting.

“I came outside and I saw the boy lying there,” he said. “The police were doing CPR on him for a long time, but he didn’t wake up.”

Redding was struck in the leg and upper body.

“Unfortunately, the bullet went through his chest and he succumbed to his injuries on the scene,” Oktrova said.
All three were taken to St. Barnabas Hospital. Redding was pronounced dead. The two younger teenagers are expected to recover.

The killing has especially unsettled the neighborhood in part because it occurred in broad daylight on one of the neighborhood’s busiest commercial corridors. It also stands in stark contrast to the broader crime narrative that city officials have emphasized in recent months.

Last year was the safest year on record for gun violence citywide, with the fewest shooting incidents and shooting victims in the city’s history, according to NYPD. In the 50th Precinct, which covers Riverdale, Kingsbridge, Marble Hill, Spuyten Duyvil and parts of Kingsbridge Heights, major crime largely mirrored that decline.

Several news outlets reported that investigators were examining the Kingsbridge shooting as possibly gang-related, although the NYPD has not confirmed this.

For Jeremy Molina, program manager of Bronx Rise Against Gun Violence West, a community intervention program, urges the public not to jump to conclusions.

“It’s very unfortunate that people jumped right to automatically assume what the situation is,” Molina said. "It could be as simple as  speaking to the wrong individuals and now [people] say you're associated with someone." 

Speculation about gangs, he added, often surfaces quickly after shootings involving teenagers. But youth violence rarely stems from a single, easily labeled cause.

“It’s a mixture of a lot of things that occur in the community,” Molina said, describing a landscape shaped by social media disputes, neighborhood rivalries, peer dynamics and access to firearms.

Arguments that begin online can escalate rapidly in person, especially among adolescents navigating status, pride and public perception. What may appear from the outside to be organized gang activity can, in some cases, be rooted in personal disputes that spiral beyond control.

“For a young kid to be able to have access to a gun, that’s the first problem,” Molina said, cautioning that prematurely labeling a case as gang-related can obscure the deeper social dynamics at play and complicate prevention efforts.

Youth conflicts, he said, can arise from “so many things” — retaliation, arguments, social media exchanges or simply association with the wrong crowd.

Detectives continue to search for the remaining suspects in Redding’s killing. Police have urged anyone with information to contact Crime Stoppers.