In what appears to be a case of mistaken identity, NYC prep star Tayshana Murphy was shot outside her family’s apartment in a housing project in Harlem’s Morningside Heights neighborhood.
There were no arrests and the shooting remained under investigation, according to media reports.
Witnesses told the New York Daily News that Murphy, who was wearing a hooded sweatshirt, was mistaken for a boy who had gotten in a fight with men from a nearby housing project.
“She was pleading for her life,” her friend Teka Taylor, 22, who was with her at the time, told the Daily News. “She was saying ‘No, please, I don’t have nothing to do with it.’ “
Murphy, who was rated the class of 2012′s No. 16 point guard by ESPN.com’s HoopGurlz recruiting site, was cited as one of the top girl’s basketball prospects in the city by the Daily News. She had drawn interest from several colleges, her family said.
“She said ‘Mom I’m going to get you out of the projects,’ ” her mother, Tephanie Holston, said, according to the Daily News. “She loved basketball, she lived and breathed basketball.”
