In the winter of 2019, a tragic incident unfolded in a second-floor apartment in the Prospect Lefferts Gardens neighborhood of Brooklyn, forever altering the lives of two families. On the evening of December 7th, 18-year-old Christon Jarrett was with his friend, Moustapha Diop, who was also 18, when a handgun Diop was handling discharged. A single bullet struck Jarrett in the abdomen, inflicting a devastating wound.
Emergency services rushed him to Kings County Hospital, where he would spend the next 29 days fighting for his life.
Christon, who was of Jamaican descent, had dreams of obtaining his high school equivalency diploma and one day owning a sneaker store. His family described him as a young man with a future full of promise. In the hospital, he endured immense suffering, including a punctured intestine and paralysis, and had to have part of his colon removed. In a heart-wrenching conversation with his grandmother from his hospital bed, he lamented, 'My friend shot me and left me to die.' Despite the efforts of medical staff, Christon Jarrett succumbed to his injuries on January 5, 2020.
Following the shooting, Moustapha Diop was arrested on December 13, 2019. He was initially charged with assault, reckless endangerment, and criminal possession of a firearm. After Jarrett's death, the case was classified as a homicide. Diop was released on $100,000 bail, a decision that caused anguish for Jarrett's grieving family, who called for more significant legal consequences. The investigation into the accidental shooting that cut a young man's life short continued as his family sought justice for their profound loss.
