A 17-year-old girl is fighting for her life with a stray bullet lodged in her head after being caught up in a mass shooting visiting her old Bronx neighborhood on the day her mother graduated with a PhD.
Anthonaya Cambell was watching a basketball tournament at Haffen Park across the street from her family’s old apartment in Baychester when the shooting broke out, leaving one man dead, three adults wounded and her clinging to life. Police confirmed Anthonaya was an innocent bystander.
Hours before Anthonaya was shot in the back of the head, her mother Jennifer Talbot was awarded her PhD in psychology at her graduation ceremony from Heart Bible International University in Connecticut, where mother and daughter moved five years ago.
“My day of celebration became my day of my worst nightmare really quickly,” Talbot said.
Earlier in the day Anthonaya had called her mom several times to ask how her big day was going. “She felt bad because she didn’t get to come [to graduation]” Talbot said. “It was the biggest achievement of my life.”
Anthonaya Campbell was supposed to return to Connecticut to start her senior year of high school in Hartford Tuesday. Instead she is in a hospital bed at Jacobi Medical Center.
“Right now it’s touch and go. All we can do is pray,” said Elizabeth Gardener, Anthonaya’s aunt, who lives across the street from the park in the apartment where Anthonaya grew up and was staying for a late-summer vacation. “She shouldn’t be like that. She should be heading to school right now.”
Anthonaya had been staying in the Bronx to celebrate her 17th birthday on Aug. 8, a birthday she shared with a cousin.
“They played in that park. We’ve been here for years,” Gardener said. “Her mother moved her to Connecticut to give her a different life. She was visiting. She just celebrated her birthday.”
The basketball tournament was promoted as a community giveback with the first 100 kids to show up promised free back-to-school supplies. The shooting sparked off in the park near Wickham and Burke Aves.
“She was watching the basketball tournament and she just happened to be in the park,” Gardener said. “They heard the shots and people started to run and the direction she ran, I guess it hit her in the head. It doesn’t make sense to me.”
“The bullet went from the back of her head and it’s lodged behind her eye,” Gardener added. “People know her. She’s very friendly. She’s never had any issues. She’s like a little saint.”
Anthonaya wanted to be a speech pathologist. Despite the move to Connecticut, her family always felt safe in Baychester, where much of her family remained.
“She could go far and this is just not fair,” her aunt said.
Talbot was attending her post-graduation gala when she got the call that Anthonaya had been shot. She changed out of her gown and ran for her car.
“I went straight to the hospital,” Talbot said. “To see my daughter on a hospital bed with a trach, half her head shaved off, a bullet lodged in her eye with one patch and her head is swollen twice the size …”
“They’re telling me I may have to adjust myself to probably saying goodbyes because she may not be okay,” she added.
“She had two consecutive heart attacks on site. When they brought her there she was unresponsive but they gave her a trach and also put her on life support.”
Talbot is refusing to give up on her daughter’s life and thinks it’s a good sign doctors are planning a blood transfusion.
“I guess a plus is that they’re willing to do a blood transfusion so there must be some kind of hope,” she said.
Police currently have four suspects in custody but no charges were immediately filed Sunday as cops continue to probe how the shooting unfolded.
Jaceil Banks, 32, was shot in the chest and died at Jacobi Medical Center, cops said. He lived near Yankee Stadium about six miles from the park, according to cops.
A 30-year-old man and a 29-year-old woman, both shot in the back at the park, showed up at the same hospital by private means. They were in stable condition.
A 42-year-old man shot in his right arm went to Montefiore Medical Center by private means and is expected to recover.
The basketball game was organized by neighborhood fixture and rapper Ziico Niico and attracted people from all over the city.
Ziico Niico, whose real name is Nico Burrell, was sentenced to 12-and-a-half years in prison on federal racketeering charges in 2018. It was not immediately clear when he was released and he could not immediately be reached for comment Sunday.
The Bronx’s 47th precinct, which includes Haffen Park, had seen a spike in shootings and homicides this year before the mass shooting — even as those numbers drop in the Bronx overall and in the rest of the city.
The precinct had seen eight slayings this year through Aug. 17 compared to four by the same point last year. And 25 people had been shot by that date, compared to 21 during the same timeframe last year.
This year through Aug. 17 there have been 64 murders in the Bronx compared to 75 by the same point last year, a 17% drop. The borough has seen 202 shooting victims this year through that date, down from 268 in the same time frame in 2024, a 25% drop.
Citywide, shootings and homicides have fallen to historic lows, with 201 slayings so far this year through Aug. 17, a 20% drop from by this time last year, and 564 shooting victims compared to 700 during the same period last year, a 19% drop.
With Rocco Parascandola
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