Reward Offered For Tips On Queens Teen's Shooting Death

SOUTH JAMAICA, QUEENS — Police are offering a $10,000 reward for information that leads to an arrest in the shooting death of 14-year-old Aamir Griffin on a Queens basketball court last month.

That's quadruple the $2,500 the NYPD originally offered as a reward for information.

Griffin was shot and killed by a stray bullet the night of Oct. 26 while he was practicing basketball in South Jamaica's Baisley Park Houses, according to police and news reports.

He dreamed of playing for the NBA and played basketball for Benjamin N. Cardozo High School in Bayside, where he was a freshman, the New York Post reported. He lived in the Baisley Houses complex, near the court where he was killed.

Detectives told the Post they suspect the shooting was gang-related and that Griffin wasn't the shooter's intended target.

Griffin's uncle, Akiba, started a GoFundMe to raise money for the teen's funeral and burial expenses so the family can "send Aamir home the way in which a young King deserves to go home," he wrote. It has raised more than $14,000.

"Our family and Aamir's entire village is completely shattered," Akiba Griffin wrote on the GoFundMe page. "None of Aamir's loved ones were prepared to say goodbye to him, as he was the model kid and one of the greatest human beings to walk this earth."

Anyone with information in regard to this incident is asked to call the NYPD's Crime Stoppers Hotline at 1-800-577-TIPS (8477) or for Spanish, 1-888-57-PISTA (74782). The public can also submit their tips by logging onto the CrimeStoppers website at WWW.NYPDCRIMESTOPPERS.COM, or on Twitter @NYPDTips.

All calls are strictly confidential.