Teen Tennis Player Kemar Brooks' Accused Killer Needs a Bronx Court Date

While tennis fans geared up for the finals at the 2024 U.S. Open in Queens, my mind was drawn to a slain, 14 year old tennis player in the Bronx.  

His name was Kemar Brooks.

Kemar Brooks, 14, was fatally shot when he sought shelter from storm.

Kemar's murder case was cold for twelve years, until this summer.

That's when Bronx detectives pieced together the evidence that led them to suspect Steve Boria, aka "Crom Gunz," a 28 year old leader in the "Slut Gang" who's serving time in federal prison on weapons and narcotics charges.  Boria was 16 when Kemar Brooks was gunned down on July 26, 2012, after Kemar's tennis game was interrupted by a thunderstorm.  The teen's father found his own son dead on the ground inside Haffen Park the next morning, across the street from their apartment, when Kemar failed to come home that Thursday night.

Haffen Park is located across the street from victim’s apartment.

A sealed indictment secured by Bronx District Attorney Darcel Clark charges Boria with fatally shooting the 14 year old Brooks with a stray bullet inside the park.  

Kemar had been playing tennis with two friends.

Unfortunately, the severe July storm that moved in knocked out power--and surveillance cameras--around the park, so finding a suspect wasn't easy.  

Kemar Brooks and his friends had tried taking shelter from the rain inside a gazebo.  A witness said that's when Steve Boria came into the park wearing a hooded sweatshirt and started firing shots from the basketball courts.  Boria apparently believed rivals from another gang hung out in the gazebo.  

Police said Boria fired four shots initially. When Kemar Brooks and his friends ran, Boria allegedly fired two more bullets, one of them hitting Kemar in the head,

Kemar's father, Cassell Brooks, had searched the perimeter of the park in the darkness when his son failed to come home the night of July 26th.  

It wasn't until the following morning, in daylight, that the dad made a heartbreaking discovery: Kemar lying sideways in the dirt near picnic tables, his tennis bag still slung over his shoulder.

Kemar Brooks, a 14 year old immigrant from Jamaica, was a regular on the tennis courts.

"My heart fell out," Cassell Brooks told me when I reported on the cold case for PIX11 News in 2013.  

The sadness in the family's basement apartment on Gunther Avenue in the Bronx, right across the street from Haffen Park, was palpable.  

Cassell Brooks showed me the memorial tennis racquet that Kemar's friends and schoolmates made to honor his son.

Kemar was the youngest of five children; his family had emigrated to the Bronx from Jamaica, West Indies, two years before the shooting.  

Kemar's father said his son was on the honor roll in his 9th grade class at Bronx Academy of Health Careers.

Kemar started playing tennis almost immediately when he arrived in the Bronx, and locals at Haffen Park said the teen picked up the sport very quickly, because he was a natural.

Investigators said Kemar had nothing to do with the gang turf battles inside the park and was always just eager to play tennis.  

There was a report the gunman who killed him jumped into a car on Gunther Avenue.

In 2016, after the NYPD rounded up 100 gang members in the Bronx affiliated with the Bloods, investigators held out hope they could glean new information about the murder of Kemar Brooks.

Then, in 2017, Steve Boria was listed at the top of a federal indictment brought against the "Slut Gang" by the United States Southern District of New York.  

The racketeering indictment stated "Boria ordered acts of violence against rival gang members....in the summer of 2012 at Haffen Park."

"Slut Gang" was charged with distribution of cocaine base, marijuana, heroin and ecstasy, allegedly using violence "to protect and expand the enterprise's criminal operations."

The government documents said Slut Gang controlled areas of the Boston-Secor and Coop City housing developments in the Bronx, along with the corner of Dyre Avenue and Light Street.

The indictment revealed the 2 Fly gang was one of Slut Gang's rivals, with a base in Haffen Park.

By 2018, police said they had identified the 380 gun used in the shooting that killed Kemar Brooks.

In 2019, Steve Boria made a deal in the federal racketeering case, pleading guilty to gun and drug charges that would send him to prison for 15 years.

He's slated to be released in April 2030.

Now in his late 20's, Boria is housed in the high-security U.S. Penitentiary Coleman 1, located in Sumter County, Florida.  

New York authorities want to see him do his time in state prison for murder.

Which brings us to the summer of 2024, when D.A. Darcel Clark and her team indicted Boria for killing Kemar Brooks, hoping to unseal the charges when Boria is produced in a New York courtroom.

Getting Boria back to the Bronx involves negotiations with federal authorities.

"The paperwork is in," a source told me.  "We're waiting on the feds."

Kemar's father was notified earlier this summer about the sealed indictment.

And I will always remember the grieving dad's words from 2013, when he recalled finding his son dead in the park, with the tennis bag over his shoulder:  "It's something I will never get over."