Slain NYC basketball player may have been followed from subway: sources

Slain basketball player Jayden Goodridge and his friends may have been followed from the subway before being fired upon on a Bronx street, police sources said Thursday — as one pal told The Post how the bullets “came out of nowhere.”

Goodridge, 21, may have been stalked before he was fatally wounded while walking with two pals in Mott Haven on Sunday evening in what cops believe could have been a tragic case of mistaken identity, the sources said.

“It came out of nowhere,” one of Goodridge’s friends, who emerged unharmed from the shooting on East 149th Street, said on Thursday.

“Nobody was a target. It was just random.”

Asked who may have pulled the trigger, the 20-year-old answered, “I have no idea.”

The young man had just gotten off the train with Goodridge and another friend around 6:15 p.m. when the gunman zipped by on an e-scooter and opened fire on them — in a shooting that was caught on surveillance footage.

Jayden Goodridge
Jayden Goodridge was shot dead in what cops believe was a case of mistaken identity
Twitter / @StepinacHS

Goodridge, a former point guard on the AAU team the Riverside Hawks, was hit multiple times in the stomach.  He was rushed to Lincoln Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

One of his friends, also 21, was grazed in the lip and treated at the scene by paramedics.

No arrests had been made as of Thursday.

A police official on Thursday said Goodridge and his friends did not appear to be the intended targets, though its unclear who was. All three had their faces obscured at the time of the shooting, and none have any gang affiliations, the official said.

Jayden Goodridge, 21.
Jayden Goodridge, 21, was shot and killed in the Bronx on Sunday evening.
Andre Thomas

Goodridge, a former basketball standout at Stepinac High School in White Plains in Westchester County, was now attending the Collee of St. Vincent’s, his family said.

His grieving cousin said Thursday that the three friends were inseparable.

“They were like downstairs every day,” Madison Atkinson, 19, told The Post. “The one who got grazed on the lip was like his twin.”

Thanksgiving will be particularly hard for the family, Atkinson added — particularly Goodridge’s 13-year-old sister — because his birthday would have been on Nov. 23, the day before the holiday.

Atkinson said Goodridge had no enemies, and finds it hard to believe that her cousin or his friends were the intended targets. The former hoops star was so easy-going that it was very difficult to even get him mad or get him upset, she said.

“No, I really don’t [believe they were targeted],” she said. “And if it was, I just need to know why. I just want to find that person. I don’t even wish suffering on him. I just want to pray for them, like what the hell is wrong with you?

“If it was meant for him it would have been a freaking Cupid’s arrow,” Atkinson said.

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