Friends and relatives remembered Johary Cantave as police continued searching for three masked suspects.
BROOKLYN, N.Y. — The killing of 14-year-old Johary Cantave in a car on a Sunset Park street has left relatives, neighbors and investigators piecing together how a trip home late Friday ended with a teenager dead and three suspects still at large.
Cantave’s death became more than another overnight police case as family members and people in his building described a boy they knew by the nickname Chris, a middle school student they said was kind, social and close to graduation. Police said he was shot in the head while seated in a car near 46th Street and Ninth Avenue. By the end of Saturday, detectives were still trying to establish the motive and whether he had been the intended target.
According to police and witnesses interviewed by local television outlets, Cantave was riding in the back seat of a car driven by Pedro Castellano, the father of one of his friends. Castellano said he was taking the boy home while following his own son, who was riding a moped ahead of them. On Ninth Avenue, Castellano said, three young men began harassing the son. He said one appeared to pull a gun, and he told his son to keep moving. Then shots were fired toward the car. Cantave was hit in the head. Castellano drove straight to Maimonides Medical Center, where the boy was pronounced dead. Police said the suspects fled and were described as three males dressed in black and wearing ski masks.
By daylight Saturday, the physical signs of the shooting had sharpened the outline of the case. Officers blocked off the vehicle outside the hospital after it was used to bring Cantave in. Its back window had been shattered. At the shooting scene, investigators canvassed the block and recovered shell casing evidence. Yet several critical facts remained unsettled. Police had not said how many rounds were fired, whether one or more shooters were involved or whether the dispute started with the occupants of the car or with the moped rider. Authorities also had not publicly said if surveillance footage had captured the confrontation. The uncertainty has left the central question hanging over the case: was Cantave caught in someone else’s conflict, or was he the person the gunman meant to hit?
The people speaking publicly about Cantave did not describe him as someone known for trouble. His brother said their final exchange before he left home was ordinary and protective. He told him not to stay out too long and to be safe. Later, that conversation took on the weight families often place on the last routine words they never expected to remember. A family friend, Danielle Thily, said she had watched the boy grow up in the building and remembered him as playful and generous with neighborhood children. Relatives said he was the youngest of three siblings and was just months from finishing middle school. In those portraits, the case shifted from police language about a victim and suspects to the loss of a child whose life was still in its early, familiar stages of school, friends and home.
The shooting also lands at a time when city officials have been describing a mixed public safety picture. The NYPD said New York City finished 2025 with record lows in both shooting incidents and shooting victims. But the same department said youth violence had become a larger share of the remaining gun violence. Police reported that 14% of shooting victims last year were under 18, while 18% of shooting perpetrators were under 18. Those figures, officials said, were the highest proportions recorded since the department began tracking them in 2018. In practical terms, that means a city that has lowered overall shooting totals is still confronting cases in which teenagers are victims, suspects or both. Cantave’s killing now stands as one of those cases likely to draw pressure for fast arrests and a fuller explanation of how the encounter escalated.
Detectives are expected to focus next on witness interviews, neighborhood surveillance cameras and forensic evidence from the shell casing and the car. Until an arrest is made, the procedural track remains limited to evidence collection, suspect identification and any future grand jury or charging decisions that could follow. Police had announced no arrests and no court appearances by Saturday night. They also had not released the names or ages of any person of interest. The next formal development is likely to come when investigators either identify the suspects publicly or provide a more detailed account of the dispute that preceded the shooting.
For now, the case stands at the point where grief and investigation meet. On one side are detectives trying to answer how a masked group ended a teenager’s life on a residential Brooklyn block. On the other are relatives and neighbors trying to absorb that the boy they expected to see again after a quick night out is gone. As of Sunday, that divide had not yet narrowed, and the neighborhood was left waiting for the next break in the case.
Author note: Last updated March 8, 2026.