A 21-year-old man has been arrested on a charge of second-degree murder in the stray bullet shooting death of a rising-star teen basketball player in Mount Vernon on New Year's Eve, authorities say.
Shamoya McKenzie, 13, was shot in the head while riding home from basketball practice on the last afternoon of 2016. Prosecutors say the eighth-grader was caught in gang-related fire when David Hardy shot at a man named Prince Scott, who was wounded in the arm. Authorities believe he also was involved in a gang, though Scott faces no charges at this time.
Hardy, who has a previous violent felony conviction related to robbery, was arrested around noon Monday. Authorities say he fled to North Carolina after the shooting and then returned to Mount Vernon at some point; local police had been working with the FBI to take him into custody.
"We don't know if he knew we were after him, but he did return to Mount Vernon," Police Commissioner Ron Fatigate said.
It wasn't immediately clear if he had an attorney who could comment on the allegations.
McKenzie's mother has said her daughter dreamed of attending the University of Connecticut and playing for the WNBA. She already was playing junior varsity basketball with Mount Vernon High School's Lady Knights.
Dwayne Murray, McKenzie's basketball coach, said the arrest "is a good thing, obviously, for some closure, but the idea of having closure 'cause you found a killer -- it's just something wrong with that."
Murray saw McKenzie rise from a timid player to a powerhouse, elevated to the boy's team. He said he spoke with her mother Monday night.
"She was happy that they found him," he said.
"It's a bittersweet kind of day," said David Newton, another of McKenzie's coaches. "It doesn't bring her back. But it does help with the healing process."
"Shamoya did everything right," Murray previously said. "She was good in school, she didn't hang out. And she still got killed."
