On the night of September 27, 2024, 18-year-old Akim Cisse was shot while a passenger in a gray Nissan Altima in the McDonald’s parking lot on South Conduit Avenue in Springfield Gardens, Queens. The shooting occurred between 10:15 and 10:20 p.m. after an argument inside the restaurant escalated outside. A figure fired about three shots into the vehicle; one struck Cisse in the back of the head.

He was taken by private means to a nearby hospital in critical condition and was later declared dead. Cisse had turned 18 four days earlier and was a recent graduate of Transit Tech Career and Technical Education High School in Brooklyn, where he played on the basketball team and was remembered as a friend and brother to many. Detectives from the 105th Precinct arrested 18-year-old Rayvon Phillip of Jamaica, Queens, on October 2, 2024; Phillip was identified as a reputed member of the BG4 street gang and was charged with second-degree murder and criminal possession of a weapon.

What details about that night or the people involved remain unclear?