Bronx stabbing leaves 1 teen dead, another injured, police say

A teenage boy was killed and another injured in a stabbing at a Bronx playground Tuesday night, and police were still looking for the perpetrator early Wednesday.

NYPD officers found 14-year-old Angel Mendoza with multiple knife wounds around 7:30 p.m. at Williamsbridge Oval Playground in Norwood. First responders took him to Jacobi Hospital in critical condition, where he was pronounced dead, police said.

A 17-year-old boy was also stabbed in the abdomen during the incident, which police said resulted from some sort of dispute with several other people. He was transported to Montefiore Medical Center by private means. Officials said he was in stable condition.

Police said Wednesday they arrested four people in connection with the attack: 18-year-old Andrew Ansah, 18-year-old Jordan Williams, along with a 16-year-old and a 15-year-old, whose names have not been released because they are minors. All four face charges of murder, manslaughter, gang assault and weapons possession, police said.

Their attorney information was not immediately available.

Mendoza lived about half a mile from the playground, where kids scampered Wednesday not far from a cluster of candles marking the spot where the teen was attacked.

In the family’s apartment on Mosholu Parkway, Mendoza’s parents grappled with what they could have done to keep their son safe. They said he had entered a rebellious stage of life – refusing to go to school, insisting on going out when he wanted, and spending much of his time talking to friends on his phone.

“The problem wasn’t that he was violent, the problem was that he didn’t want to go to school,” Mendoza’s father Miguel Mendoza told Gothamist in Spanish, as the boy’s mother broke down on the couch and his younger brother and older sister sat teary-eyed.

“We even went to the Bronx district attorney’s office and family court,” he added.

But even when he called the police, Miguel Mendoza said, the family was unable to connect with the right kind of programs to help Angel Mendoza.

Now, Mendoza’s parents said they are hoping police find whoever attacked him Tuesday night. He had told his family he was going to a friend’s house, but they weren’t sure whether or not he ever made it there.

They showed Gothamist a photo of his bloodied face at the hospital, after doctors had already declared him dead.

“We want justice,” said Mendoza’s mother, Ramona Hernandez Mendoza. “To the mother of whoever did this… I hope to god that she never goes through what I’m going through right now. Because what’s happening to me can happen to her, too.”

Homicides are down more than 50% this year so far in the 52nd Precinct, according to NYPD data. That precinct includes the North Bronx neighborhoods of Bedford Park, Fordham, Kingsbridge, Norwood, Bronx Park and University Heights.

Felony assaults, defined as serious attacks that can permanently injure people, are up 14% in the precinct.

A 16-year-old girl was stabbed and killed in a smoke shop on Boston Road and Mickle Avenue last month, about 2 miles from where Mendoza died.

This story has been updated to include the arrests of four suspects.