Reported by Al Jazeera
New York City mayor says US president ‘has agreed to grant her visa immediately’.
New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani says after a phone call with United States President Donald Trump that the mother of a 15-year-old Ghanaian boy who was shot dead in the Bronx will be granted a visa.
Mamdani wrote in a post on X on Saturday that he had spoken with Trump about Javits Frimpong, whose mother is seeking to travel to New York to say goodbye to her son.
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The US president “has agreed to grant her visa immediately”, the mayor wrote.
“The murder of a child is a pain no parent should have to endure, let alone from thousands of miles away,” he wrote.
CCTV footage that captured the last moments of Frimpong’s life showed him being chased by three other teens on Thursday morning as he was on his way to school. He was shot in his abdomen and died the same day in hospital. Thousands of people attended vigils held for the teenager across the city.
The 15-year-old had told his father he was bullied at school. Thomas Frimpong, Javits’s father, called on the police to help him “find justice for my son”. Police have said they are investigating, but no arrests have been made yet.
Javits’s parents moved him to the US a year ago in the hopes of providing him a better life. Congressman Richie Torres, who represents the Bronx, wrote on social media that “our entire borough is mourning a young man who should have had his whole future ahead of him.”
Ghanaian Foreign Minister Sam Okudzeto Ablakwa stated on social media that Ghanaian officials are “coordinating with local authorities” and helping Javits’s mother with her visa application. Visa applications from a number of African countries have been severely limited under the Trump administration.