Teen Targeted By Threats Online After NYPD Misidentifies Him As Parade Shooting Suspect

A teenager has become the subject of a barrage of online vitriol after the New York Police Department posted an image of him online, misidentifying him as a mass shooter.

An image of 15-year-old Camden Lee was posted by NYPD's social media accounts. Lee can be seen standing on a street in Brooklyn, wearing shorts and a hoodie. The caption of the photo declared that Lee, the individual pictured, "discharged a firearm" at the West Indian American Day parade in September 2024. One person died as a result of the shooting, and four others were injured.

"I see the NYPD logo. I see me. I see 'suspect wanted for murder,'" Lee recalled, speaking to AP News. "I couldn't believe what was happening. Then everything went blurry."

After meeting with Lee and his attorney, NYPD removed all images of Lee from social media. However, Lee had already been identified as a person of interest following a mass shooting and continued to receive hate and threats from users online despite a lack of evidence surrounding his involvement in the incident.

"It takes me to a dark place," Lee told AP. "I don't feel like myself anymore. I don't have the opportunity to explain my side of the story. Everyone is so fixed on this one image of me: murderer."

For months following the shooting, NYPD did not issue an apology or publicly retract their statements regarding Lee. That was until Sunday, when the department told news outlets that they had "mistakenly stated that [Lee] was wanted for the fatal shooting."

"The NYPD should have immediately corrected this misstatement," stated the department's chief spokesperson, Delaney Kempner. "We apologize for the error and will continue to seek justice for the victims of this shooting."

"I used to have a lot of trust in the NYPD and how they do things," Lee's mother, Chee Chee Brock, whose other son recently joined the police, told AP. "But I raised my kids to admit when they made a mistake. If you can blame an innocent kid for murder, what else can you get away with?"

The police department updated its statement to identify Lee as a "person of interest" following the shooting, justifying this label by stating that he was "on the scene before, during, and after the incident." The case remains unsolved.

"Even in their apology, they're painting him with a brush of culpability to cover their mistake," Wylie Stecklow, an attorney for Lee's family, told the outlet. "They're downplaying what they did and not owning up to the fact that they put him in harm's way."