Cops arrested a man they say fatally stabbed an 18-year-old boy in a brawl that broke out on a troubled commercial strip in the Bronx, police said Thursday.
Police have arrested Travis Profit, 38, who is accused of the fatal stabbing of Shannon Kelsey in the chest during a fight Tuesday afternoon near Southern Blvd. and Westchester Ave. Cops initially believed Kelsey had been shot to death, but later determined he died of a stab wound.
A 15-year-old boy was also slashed in the lip, and Profit was shot in the leg during the brawl, according to police. Both are expected to recover.
The fracas broke out when a group of youngsters tried to rob an older, more established group that was selling marijuana on the block, according to a police source with knowledge of the case.
“He’s a bit of a perp and a victim,” the source said of the suspect.
“This guy is a drug dealer. Two of the guys in the melee were trying to rob him of his drugs. They didn’t manage it. He managed to stab two of them. One kid died, the other guy didn’t,” the source said. “It was a robbery turned melee. He was shot in the left leg.”
“There are a number of un-apprehended others,” the source added. Police are still looking for the person who shot the gun.
Hours after Kelsey died, a group of young mourners erected a memorial for him with shoplifted candles from a local bodega, threatening an employee at gunpoint when he tried to stop them, video shared with the Daily News showed.
“They took about five or six candles,” said store clerk Ayoub Labib, who was finishing the end of his 12-hour shift when the shoplifters burst into the bodega on Webster Ave. near E. 170th St. “I told him, ‘Yo, come pay me.’ He turned to me and said, ‘Shut the f—k up.’ And he moved outside. I followed him. I opened the door and followed him outside, told him again, ‘Yo, what’s going on? You need to pay me’.’’
One of the shoplifters then threatened Labib with a gun, he said.
“Five candles? That doesn’t make sense,” Labib said. “And you come in with a gun? That’s stupid.”
”If you’re doing stupid s—t, you need to be locked up,” he added.
In an interview, Shannon’s father, Marvin Kelsey, a 65-year-old retired construction worker, acknowledged his son ran with a rough crowd, but blamed their environment for the violence.
“There are no bad kids around here,” Kelsey said. “They are a product of their environment. It’s a concrete jungle … I grew up in the Bronx, the Patterson Houses, so I know what it’s all about.”
“He was my only boy,” Kelsey said. “There is no way to describe this loss. There is no way to describe how to handle it.”
Profit, who lives in the Bronx, is charged with murder, attempted murder, manslaughter and weapons possession.
