A European professional basketball player was fatally shot and two people wounded Friday night at a Harlem basketball tournament, cops and witnesses said.
Kinu Rochford, a standout at Fairleigh Dickinson University in New Jersey, was struck twice in the head at around 10:30 p.m. at the Kingdome Basketball Tournament in the Martin Luther King Jr. Towers on Lenox Avenue, police said.
Rochford, 35, who was playing in the tournament, was shot while watching between games, according to cops.
Witnesses said Rochford was struck the second time when he was already on the ground bleeding. Cops have not confirmed that.
Emergency responders gave CPR to Rochford, who lived in Crown Heights, and rushed him to Mount Sinai Morningside Hospital, but he couldn’t be saved, cops said.
The two injured — a 28-year-old man was shot in the shin and a 22-year-old woman was shot in the right forearm — were among the estimated 500 in the crowd watching the tournament between West 112th Street and West 115th Street.
They were both taken to Harlem Hospital in stable condition.
There were no arrests, and the motive wasn’t clear, a police spokesman said.
The FDU Knights posted condolences on Instagram about Rochford, a standout power forward and center when he played there from 2011 to 2013.
“FDU is devastated to hear of the tragic passing of former men’s basketball player Kinu Rochford (‘13),” the post reads.
“A standout Knight and leader, Rochford built a legacy in Hackensack. He was 35 years old.”
Dave’s Joint, a website dedicated to basketball, also posted about Rochford’s death on X.
“Our condolences go out to the family & friends of Kinu Rochford, a former standout at Globe Tech & at FDU in the early to mid 2010’s,” the post reads. “May he rest in power!
Rochford began playing professionally in 2013 and won the Lithuanian National Basketball League championship in 2017 with Garonne Sūduva-Mantinga.
A man who identified himself as “Freak” said it was the first day of the well-known tourney that was delayed Thursday because of rain.
“This s–t needs to stop,” Freak told the Post. “I got kids running around these projects.”
He said there were about 500 people packed into seats watching the games.
“This is a day for the community and we’re probably not gonna have this no more,” he said. “We need more police (on) patrol.”
Jessica Montgommery, who has been living in the towers for a decade, was at the tournament when sheheard the gunshots.
“It sounded like a firework,” the 45-year-old said. “And then I heard it again and people started running.”
A man, who identified himself as “Wavy,” saw paramedics working on Rochford.
“He was one of the players,” he said. “He was just warming up for the next game.”
A mural painted at the court’s surface a day earlier shows Walt Frazier passing the championship trophy to New York Knicks point guard Jalen Brunson.
“All I know is that young black man that came out here to play basketball and he is not going home tonight,” Wavy added.
https://nypost.com/2026/07/11/us-news/basketball-player-killed-at-packed-harlem-tourney/
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