Cedrick Black, a 34-year-old Black man, spent the late afternoon of September 15, 2020 on the North Shore of Staten Island, drawn to Jersey Street in New Brighton where mourners had gathered at a makeshift memorial for someone killed just a day earlier. The gathering was supposed to be a pause in the violence, but it became the next chapter: shots rang out near Jersey Street and Crescent Avenue, and he was struck in the chest.
Neighbors who heard the gunfire watched the street fill with flashing lights as police and medics rushed him to Richmond University Medical Center, where he died.
In the first hours after the shooting, the story came out in fragments—an attack that seemed to happen in moments and then vanish. Police said the gunman fled, and early accounts described the assailant escaping in a black vehicle headed north on Jersey Street. The killing landed in the middle of a grim stretch of gunfire on Staten Island, and the neighborhood’s shock hardened into a familiar worry as investigators canvassed for witnesses and leads, but reported that there had been no arrest at the time.
The case did not remain unanswered. In an official summary of Staten Island prosecutions, the Richmond County District Attorney’s office later identified Tyler Carmon as the man responsible, describing how the shooting “disrupt a peaceful memorial service” and how an “illegal gun” ended Cedrick Black’s life. Instead of a trial, prosecutors reported a resolution in court: Carmon pleaded guilty to Manslaughter in the First Degree and received a 12-year prison sentence, with the office noting that it had sought a longer term but considered the plea and sentence a measure of justice for the family.
