Tristan Jordan Rodriguez Sanders was a 15-year-old Black male from Brooklyn whose last Sunday in October ended in the Albany Houses, a NYCHA complex in Crown Heights. As evening settled in on October 27, 2024, a 911 call came in around 7:19 p.m. reporting that a boy had been shot at 1008 Saint Marks Avenue. When police arrived, they found Tristan unconscious, hit in the chest, and they rushed him to NYC Health and Hospitals/Kings County in critical condition. He did not survive.
Investigators described a sudden burst of violence in and around the buildings along St. Marks Avenue, between Troy and Albany avenues, where gunfire erupted just before 7:30 p.m. Witness accounts and early police information pointed to two men running from the area after the shots. One was described wearing a blue sweatshirt and the other a gray sweatshirt, with detectives still trying to piece together why Tristan was targeted at all.
In the weeks afterward, grief hardened into a family’s steady, public demand for answers. Tristan’s mother, Shanae Sanders, remembered him as a kid who lived for his people—family and friends—and who poured himself into basketball, music, and rapping. His father, Timothy Carter, spoke about the stunned, helpless moment he learned what had happened and the need to see the truth of it with his own eyes. As the family pleaded for “Justice for Tristan,” the case remained open, with police still looking for suspects rather than announcing arrests.
Nearly a year later, the emptiness still had a place and an address. On the weekend just before the anniversary of Tristan’s death, loved ones and community advocates gathered outside the Albany Houses with candles, balloons, and photos, returning to the same NYCHA grounds where he was killed—reported as a stairwell or lobby area in the building. Supporters announced a reward for information leading to an arrest, while Shanae Sanders said she had been asking to see security footage from the lobby where her son was shot, believing it could help put names and faces to the people who fled. At that point, she said, the family still did not know who pulled the trigger, and police continued to say they were searching for two individuals connected to the shooting.
