In a selfless act to defend his son, 38-year-old Gerald Cummings, a Black / African American male, was fatally shot in the Flatbush neighborhood of Brooklyn on the evening of August 3, 2016. The tragic chain of events began days earlier when Cummings' 17-year-old son was reportedly robbed of his expensive 'Don C' Oakland Raiders leather and snakeskin baseball cap by a group of teenagers.
On the night of the shooting, the son spotted one of the teens wearing the distinctive cap near the basketball courts outside P.S. 6 on Snyder Avenue and called his father for help.
Gerald Cummings arrived and managed to retrieve his son's stolen hat. However, as Cummings and his son were walking away, the situation escalated dramatically. A 16-year-old boy, later identified as Adonis Barnett, who was with the group that had the stolen cap, pulled out a gun. In a senseless act of violence, Barnett fired three shots, striking Cummings in the back and the back of the head. The shooting occurred in front of Cummings' teenage son. Emergency services were called, and Cummings was rushed to Kings County Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
The investigation into the murder quickly led police to Adonis Barnett. He was arrested on August 18, 2016, and subsequently charged with murder and criminal possession of a weapon. Another teenager, Romell Baptiste, also 16, was indicted on robbery charges related to the initial theft of the baseball cap.
Adonis Barnett was later convicted of first-degree manslaughter following a jury trial. In September 2022, he was sentenced to 25 years in prison, with five years of post-release supervision. Barnett had also been convicted of second-degree criminal possession of a weapon in an earlier trial. The Brooklyn District Attorney's Office described the killing as a "senseless, cold-blooded shooting of a family man walking away after retrieving his son's stolen cap."
