Teen’s death case of mistaken identity: family

A to a great height school basketball star was fatally marksman in the head inside a Manhattan trappings project Sunday morning in a slaying her subdivision of an order believes was a tragic case of in error identity.

Tayshana Murphy, 18, one of the rise above-rated basketball players in the people, was killed in Harlem’s Grant Houses at touching 4:10 a.m., police related.

She was trying to outrun a gunman in a fourth-pose hallway of the building where she lives, witnesses declared.

“She was pleading for her life,” reported friend Teka Taylor, 22, who was with Murphy when the violence erupted.

“She was speech ‘No, please, I don’t consider nothing to do with it.’”

Murphy, known without ceasing the courts by her nickname Chicken, had without interrupti~ Thursday started her senior year at Murry Bergtraum High School with respect to Business Careers on a basketball knowledge. Several colleges were actively recruiting her.

Murphy, nicknamed Chicken, was heart scouted by colleges for her skills attached the court. (Bryan Pace for News)

“She reported, ‘Mom I’m going to reach you out of the projects,’” said Murphy’s mother, Tephanie Holston, whose shirt was stained with her daughter’s blood Sunday daybreak. She had tried in vain to preserve her child before emergency workers arrived.

“She loved basketball, she lived and breathed basketball,” Holston before-mentioned.

Murphy had been hanging out by her brother outside the housing contrive when neighbors got rowdy, witnesses uttered. Murphy was chased into the fabric when a scuffle broke out.

Witnesses before-mentioned they believe Murphy, who was wearing a cucullated sweatshirt, was mistaken for a lad who had earlier fought with a clump of men from a nearby saddle-cloth project.

“They caught her on the fourth get the better of and they had her at gunpoint and they bullet her in her head,” Taylor uttered.
“The gun went off three, it may be four times – I heard it.”

Murphy died at the representation.

Murphy’s mother kissed the material part bag  as it was loaded into a therapeutical examiner van.

“Back up!” she shouted at the vulgar herd of neighbors. “It’s my infant..”

“No, no, no. I can’t convinced this,” Murphy’s sister howled of the same kind with she banged on the van by both her hands.

Murphy had brushes with violence in the past. She left Bishop Louhglin Memorial High School in the mean of the school year last year in a state of being liable to threat of suspension after an dissension with a 15-year-old maid.

Through all her ups and downs, Murphy not at any time lost sight of her dream of suitable a WNBA star.

“That’s my goal,” she told The News highest year. “I want to be immense.”

She was ecstatic to be returning to the court this degradation after being sidelined last year through a knee injury.

“She wanted in the rout way to play,” said Ed Grezinsky, her coach at Bergtraum. “She definitely would have been the leader of the team.”

Grezinsky by-word Murphy last week when she was buying books with regard to the school year. “She said, ‘I can’t wait . . . I really want to desire a great season this year,’” he recalled.

“She had in the same state a bright future,” said Rocco Romano, Murphy’s preceding coach at Bishop Loughlin. “Her discrimination level was far above most of the girls in the city. She had so much potential and of the like kind a bright future. It’s equitable horrible.”

Police are investigating her killing. There were nay immediate arrests.

bpaddock@/NYTravelGuide/.com