A 13-year-old accused killer has been charged with murdering an older Brooklyn teen during an after-school fight over a girl, cops said Monday.
Two other teenage boys were busted in the heinous crime as well, charged with assault and gang-assault raps, police said.
The three young accused hoods turned themselves in to police Sunday night in the fatal stabbing of 17-year-old high-school senior Nyheem Wright, who was killed in front of his twin brother in a parking lot in Coney Island on the afternoon of Jan. 20.
The suspects’ names were not released by the NYPD because of their ages.
The 13-year-old has at least one prior arrest for assault as a juvenile, police sources said.
Another of the suspects, 15, has at least eight previous arrests as a juvenile, including for assault, burglary and grand larceny, sources said.
He is still on parole for an illegal-weapons rap — and is suspected in two non-fatal shootings in the city, sources said.
The third suspect, who may be as young as 14, has been arrested for two previous robberies, police said.
Cops were able to nab the teens by following their movements on video surveillance cameras before, during and after the crime, police sources told The Post on Monday.
Sources said a fight between two female students the day before the fatal stabbing prompted the deadly encounter.
The 13-year-old suspect was interrogated by detectives at the 60th Precinct stationhouse with his mother present and made incriminating statements placing himself at the scene, the sources said.
The teen was then charged with second-degree murder and fourth-degree criminal possession of a weapon in the attack.
Under New York State law, the accused 13-year-old killer will be tried on the murder rap in adult court but as a “juvenile offender,” which would mean a reduced sentence if he is convicted of the top charge.
That translates to a maximum sentence of nine years to life, compared to the max of 25 years to life for an adult who is convicted of second-degree murder.
The busts come as the NYPD grapples with what city Police Commissioner Keechant Sewell has called a “deficient” juvenile criminal-justice system hampered by the state’s “Raise the Age” statute.
The statute, signed into law by former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, took effect in October 2019, upping the age for a teen to face adult charges to 18, from the previous 16- and 17-year-old threshold.
Since then, police statistics show drastically fewer arrests in the seven major crimes and gun cases for under-18 suspects.
Cops said Nyheem’s senseless slaying stemmed from a dispute over a girl, and the teen’s mother, Simone Brooks, has told The Post that his stricken sibling, Raheem, “stayed with his twin brother the whole time,” trying to help him and then watching him die.
“I was on the phone with [Raheem] … and when the ambulance came, they kept saying, ‘[Nyheem’s] losing a lot of blood, he’s losing a lot of blood!’ ” Brooks said.
Brooks said Nyheem’s wound severed a major artery.
“There was nothing anyone could have done because the blood would just drain right out,” she said.
The principal of Nyheem’s school, K728 Liberation Diploma Plus High School, spent the night at the hospital with the family trying to help comfort them before his death, Brooks said.
After the teen’s death, city schools Chancellor David Banks tweeted, “I spoke with the young man’s principal this evening, who described him as a joyful leader.
“He was on the verge of graduation, and was a hard worker who took an active role in leading other young people at his school,” Banks wrote of Nyheem.
Brooks told The Post before the arrests that she wanted the “little punks” who killed her son to pay.
“These ones nowadays, they all want to pull weapons,” Brooks, 50, said at the time. “They don’t want to fight it out because they’re just little punks.”
“We want justice for my son Nyheem because he did not deserve this, and we are not OK.”
