A teen sought for shooting 15-year-old Riley Billingslea dead in a Bronx apartment was arrested on murder charges Tuesday as the victim’s family sat at the victim’s funeral and made a plea for his surrender, officials and family members said.
Cops charged the 16-year-old suspect with murder, attempted murder, manslaughter, and criminal possession of a weapon for the fatal shooting of Billingslea on Aug. 12, police said. The teen gunman’s name is being withheld due to his age.
He surrendered to authorities just hours before Riley’s family held the teen’s funeral in Brooklyn — and made another plea for the gun-toting teen to surrender.
Billingslea was shot in the head inside the Castle Arms apartment building in Kingsbridge, cops said.
A 13-year-old boy, who was grazed in the shooting, said he and his friends were “hanging out” in the apartment when the shooter began horsing around with the black handgun in the Claflin Ave. apartment building near W. 197th St. There were about a half-dozen teens in the apartment at the time of the shooting, he said.
“We were in the house. (He) was playing with the gun, a black gun,” he said. “We told him to take the magazine out of the gun, but he wouldn’t listen to us. I was sitting next to Riley. I was right there next to Riley.”
The next thing the teen knew, his ears were ringing, and his friend was covered in blood.
“I was checking myself and I saw the blood,” he said. “I didn’t want to see that. So I just left. I’m so sorry. It’s emotional. Riley didn’t deserve that.”