NYPD Detective's Teen Son Shot to Death Near Playground

The son of an NYPD detective has been shot to death outside a public housing project in Brooklyn.

Sean Hayes, 19, was shot twice in the chest Monday near a playground at the Marcy Houses in Bedford-Stuyvesant. He was later pronounced dead at a hospital.

The victim was the son of Detective Sean Lawrence, who lives in Queens and is assigned to the Brooklyn warrant squad.

A distraught Lawrence told the Daily News that his family was "trying to hold it together.''

"We've got a lot of family here," the grieving father said. "Everybody will take a piece of my sorrow with them to make it less for me." 

The victim, who had three sisters, two older and one younger, lived with his mother a block from where he was shot.

A neighbor, Jamilla Daise, described the victim as the "pride and joy'' of his mother, Michelle Hayes. Daise said the tragedy was made worse by the fact that the shooting happened on Martin Luther King Day – a day intended to be one against violence, for equality and one that recognizes the worth of all individual human beings.

"This is supposed to be a day where people come together," Daise told the News. 

Investigators had no suspects or motive in the killing, although one man was taken into custody last night and later released. Sources told the News the shooter may have used a shotgun because there were more than half a dozen gunshot wounds on the victim's body.