Two days after his friend was shot to death on a Coney Island street, a 17-year-old Brooklyn boy was gunned down in retaliation — just hours after lighting a memorial candle for his slain pal, according to relatives and police sources.
Tamari Carmon was shot in the head about 12:30 a.m. April 29 outside the Flatbush Gardens apartment complex when three men in black confronted him on Brooklyn Ave. near Foster Ave. in Flatbush, police said. He clung to life at Kings County hospital for two days before dying.
“He was pretty much brain dead the whole time,” Tamari’s cousin Kaliyah Serrano, 21, told the Daily News. “We all spoke to him, told him how much we loved him, told him that he’s a fighter, that he could fight this. We prayed for him.”
Tamari was targeted while mourning his friend Javon Johnnie, 18, who was shot in the chest while carrying a gun near W. 36th St. and Surf Ave. about 4:45 p.m. April 27, according to cops. Javon was rushed to NYU Langone Hospital-Brooklyn but couldn’t be saved.
Javon was three blocks away from his home in NYCHA’s O’Dwyer Gardens when he was killed. His friend Tamari lived five blocks away in the Carey Gardens public housing complex.
A law enforcement source said Tamari was killed in retaliation for Javon’s death. Both victims’ relatives described the two as longtime friends.
Javon Johnnie, 18, was fatally shot in the chest near W. 36th St. and Surf Ave. around 5 p.m. April 27.
“That was his best friend who they shot and killed in Flatbush,” said Javon’s father, 57-year-old Ernest Johnnie. “That was his best friend.”
Ernest wondered if the same shooters could be responsible for both slayings. No arrests have been made.
Javon was a high-ranking member of the Coney Island Brims gang, sparking immediate concern there could be retaliatory violence over his killing, a law enforcement source said. He had 10 arrests on his record, nine of them for felonies, including one involving a gun, police sources said.
Javon was also a person of interest in two nonfatal shootings in Brooklyn, one on Dec. 11, 2021, when he was just 14, and one three months earlier, on Sept. 14, the sources said.
Shortly before he turned 16, Javon was charged by police with manslaughter in the January 20, 2023, stabbing of Nyheem Wright, 17, in the parking lot of a Coney Island Rite Aid on Mermaid Ave. near W. 30th St.
But Brooklyn Criminal Court Judge Craig Walker dismissed the charges against Javon and denied a request from prosecutors to move his case to family court on lesser charges, a law enforcement source said.
A 14-year-old boy was also charged with manslaughter and a third boy, just 13 at the time, was charged with murder for allegedly being the one who knifed Nyheem. The boy charged with murder is still awaiting trial.
Nyheem’s slaying was linked to a fight a day earlier between two girls known to the suspects and victim.
“He and other friends, they were fighting,” Javon’s father said. “A 13-year-old stabbed a 17-year-old. All three get arrested for it. [Javon] ended up spending a year, two years [in a juvenile detention facility]. He was never convicted of anything.”
Dodging the manslaughter charge wasn’t enough to save Javon from being swept up into neighborhood violence last month.
Javon’s killer, who was wearing all black, including a puffer jacket, fled the scene, leaving behind a single 9-mm. shell casing, cops said.
Tamari was lighting candles for Javon at a makeshift memorial just hours before being shot himself, according to Javon’s dad.
Tamari’s cousin Kaliyah Serrano, 21, said Tamari, a junior at Lincoln High School, was starting to consider colleges.
“He was looking into schools,” she said. “Morehouse, Delaware State, all basically HBCUs.”
The last his family heard from Tamari he was heading to Flatbush with friends, his aunt Atasia Carter, 30, told the Daily News
“Very full of life, always joking,” Carter said of her slain nephew.
“He did everything for the family. He was just a good kid. He actually was supposed to start working. He was waiting to see about a job. He was excited. He was telling me he would make $18 an hour. It was supposed to start in about two weeks.”