Thomas Little, a 34-year-old male from Brooklyn, was killed in the early minutes of Saturday, June 6, 2026, after gunfire erupted outside an apartment building on Somers Street in Brooklyn’s Ocean Hill/Bedford-Stuyvesant area. Police were called to the front of 17 Somers Street around 12:37 a.m. after a 911 report of an assault. When officers arrived, they found Little suffering from multiple gunshot wounds to the head.
Emergency medical workers rushed Little to Brookdale University
Hospital, but he could not be saved and was pronounced dead there. The shooting unfolded on a Brooklyn street near Fulton Street, turning a late-night call for help into a homicide investigation. Early police reporting did not describe what led up to the gunfire, whether Little had been targeted, or whether there had been an argument or confrontation before he was shot.
Little’s death carried added weight because his life had already been marked by severe hardship and survival. As a child, he was badly injured after going down a garbage chute in a Brooklyn building to retrieve a superintendent’s keys; his foot was caught in a trash compactor and nearly severed. He endured numerous operations and years of physical therapy before he was able to walk again. People close to him described him as someone who had been forced to be strong from a very young age.
In the years before his death, Little’s life also included criminal cases and attempts to move beyond them. Court-related reporting described a past robbery sentence on Long Island and a later federal case connected to smuggling people across the border. After a supervised-release violation involving a vehicle with guns inside, he spent additional time in federal custody. In 2025, while speaking to a federal judge, Little expressed regret for his wrongdoings and said he wanted to make a fresh start, including focusing on his daughter.
As of the latest available reports, police had not announced any arrests in Thomas Little’s killing. No suspect or suspects had been publicly identified, and no charges, trial proceedings, or convictions had been reported in connection with the shooting. The case remained an open homicide investigation, with the known facts centered on the early-morning 911 call, the discovery of Little outside 17 Somers Street with fatal head wounds, and the absence of any publicly reported arrest.
