Teen Faces Life Sentence For Shooting 16-Year-Old In Brownsville: DA

BROWNSVILLE, BROOKLYN — A Brownsville teen just 14 years old when he fired a fatal shot has been sentenced in the death of a 16-year-old, prosecutors announced.

Aaron Nathaniel, now 18, was sentenced to 10 years to life in prison Monday for opening fire in the at the Chester Street Playground basketball courts and fatally shooting Oluwadurotimi "Timi" Oyebola in 2018, prosecutors said.

"An innocent, beloved teenager was senselessly killed when this defendant callously sprayed a Brownsville basketball court with bullets," Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez said this week.

"A promising life has been cut short, a family remains in mourning, and after living through a troubled childhood, this young defendant’s future is now in ruins.”

Nathaniel — who later admitted to the shooting but said Oyebola was not his intended target — was arrested a few weeks after the September 21 shooting, which was caught on surveillance video, prosecutors said.

Oyebola was hit once in the head and later died at the hospital, prosecutors said.

The 16-year-old was born in Nigeria and had moved to New York in 2013, according to the New York Times. He worshipped at a church in Brownsville where his father was a pastor and would sneak out to play basketball, the outlet wrote.

The murder case, which dragged on nearly four years, underscores both New York's unique treatment of juvenile offenders and concerns from advocates about court delays, only in part caused by the pandemic, the New York Times notes.

Children as young as 13 can be tried as juvenile offenders — meaning they are treated largely as adults — in New York for violent crimes, according to the outlet.

Nathaniel waited out the four years between his arrest and trial in a juvenile center in Brownsville just blocks from where he grew up and will be moved to an adult prison when he turns 21, said the outlet.

Nathaniel pleaded guilty to murder earlier this year, according to prosecutors.

According to the Times, Oyebola's father, David, has said that he forgives Nathaniel for his son's murder and prays for him each day: “That his life takes a new turn, that God continues to visit him.”