NEW YORK — The teenage gunman who allegedly killed a 16-year-old Bronx girl with a stray bullet used a build-it-yourself “ghost gun” to fire the fatal bullet, police sources said Sunday.
The Friday afternoon murder of Angellyh Yambo came as police grapple with a new source of firearms from the city — locally built firearms manufactured by entrepreneurial criminals who have figured out how to cut the trafficking part out of gun trafficking.
Jeremiah Ryan, 17, was allegedly wielding a so-called “ghost gun” when he let loose a half-dozen bullets from a half-block away from Angellyh, near University Heights High School’s South Bronx Campus, police said. Two other teens were wounded in the hail of lead.
It’s not yet clear where he allegedly got the weapon. He was arraigned Sunday on murder and other charges, and remains locked up without bail.
“How are they getting these guns? All these gangs are getting these guns how? Right now it makes me want to pick up my family and leave somewhere else,” asked Angellyh’s aunt, Maragarita Yambo. “It’s crazy. Every time I go outside it’s scary. I feel scared every time I see a group of boys or a big group and think that they might have guns.... I never thought it would touch home.”
Just two days before the shooting, cops seized a cache of ghost guns — including complete eight AR or AK style rifles and five handguns — during a raid in Brooklyn, police sources said. They also found a brand-new 3D printer, though nothing had been printed with it yet.
And last month, another alleged ghost gun dealer in Brooklyn was caught with two 3D printers — the first case in New York City where a criminal was believed to be using the printers to manufacture firearm parts.
“The Iron Pipeline is being replaced by the plastic pipeline,” said John Miller, the NYPD’s Deputy Commissioner for Intelligence and the department’s top spokesperson. “Without a change in federal law, the gun factories in the basements and apartments of New York City using assembly kits ordered online and YouTube video instructions will cut out the need for “The Iron Pipeline.”
That’s a reference to the route along Interstate 95 used by traffickers to bring guns from states with less-strict gun laws, such as Florida and Pennsylvania, to the city.
“That requires straw buyers, mules to transport the weapons up to New York and some risk,” Miller said. “This will be straight do-it-yourself manufacture to criminal consumer.”
He pointed out that a group of Bronx gang members was busted last month selling used guns to an undercover officer — suggesting that the gang was stocking up on newer weapons, possibly ghost guns.
“No gang is putting (its) hardware up for sale in those kinds of numbers unless they have replaced them with new weapons,” Miller said.
Ghost gun makers can use 3D printers to manufacture weapons’ plastic or polymer parts, printing out a gun’s lower receiver in about 12 hours from blueprints that can be easily downloaded online. They have to buy metal upper receivers separately.
As of April 6, police have seized 131 ghost guns — almost one out of every eight guns recovered by the NYPD this year. That’s a massive jump from the 29 ghost guns recovered in the same time frame last year, according to NYPD stats.
Angellyh’s aunt said the teen was on her way home from a normal day of school, heading to a store, when she was killed.
”I couldn’t think of nothing in that moment,” Margarita Yambo told the Daily News of how she reacted to learning about her niece’s death.
”I was praying and praying it wasn’t her until I got to my brother and then learned it was her,” she said.
Angellyh attended University Prep High School, a charter school a block away from the shooting, School Safety sources said. The other victims attend Mott Haven Village Prep High School, one of several schools in the South Bronx Educational Campus around the corner from the shooting, the sources said.
Angellyh loved sports, especially volleyball and baseball, and loved doing makeup, her aunt said.
“She was a beautiful soul and had everything ahead of her,” she said. “Her family was everything to her. She was always the bubbly one always smiling and happy.”
The teen lived in New York City all her life, and celebrated her Sweet 16 in January, her aunt recalled.
“She looked so beautiful, like an angel. She was so happy she was around her family and friends. I will always remember that day,” she said. “She was just the kindest person you can ever meet. She was just so generous and always happy. She loved life.”
Her alleged killer has no criminal history, no other arrests to his name, but that shouldn’t matter, Margarita Yambo said.
“For you to put a gun in your hand, you know what you was doing,” she said. “I don’t understand — you pulled the trigger, you shot somebody, you deserve life in jail.”
The other girl who was shot in the shin is still in the hospital and is expected to undergo surgery for her wound.
“She’s stable. She’s OK. She’s talking. She’s fine,” Liza Figeroa, 48, a family friend, said. “There’s no danger of her passing or anything like that. I assume that she’s probably gonna have to have therapy and crutches to get her back walking.”
The boy teen, who was hit in the buttocks during the same shooting, was released from Lincoln Hospital and is back home recovering.
“Right now he’s just resting and it’s just you know a lot at the moment,” his mother said.
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