Three months after 15-year-old Riley Billingslea was shot in the head inside a Claflin Avenue apartment in Kingsbridge Heights, the grandmother who raised him is grappling with a new blow: the 16-year-old charged with his murder is no longer behind bars. A judge set bail for the teen on Oct. 30 at $25,000 cash or a $100,000 insured bond, with conditions that include electronic monitoring.
Elaine Rogers, Billingslea's grandmother, says the decision has left her fearing an unwanted encounter in her own neighborhood. “We can bump into each other in the supermarket. I don't feel safe here,” she told News12 Bronx. Rogers has criticized the judge's decision to grant bail at all, arguing the teenager should not be allowed back in the area where her grandson died.
A Blunt Verdict From a Grieving Grandmother
Rogers did not mince words about what she believes should have happened instead. “If you take a life, you do not deserve bail,” she said, according to the same report. The 16-year-old is charged with murder in Billingslea's death and is scheduled to return to court on Dec. 21.
Billingslea was fatally shot on Aug. 12 inside the Castle Arms apartment building on Claflin Avenue near West 197th Street, according to nydailynews.com. Police say the shooting happened inside the apartment, and the teenager who would later be charged did not surrender right away.
From Manhunt to Arraignment
The accused teen turned himself in to police on Aug. 25, nydailynews.com reported, the same day as Billingslea's funeral — a detail also noted by Gothamist in its own account of the surrender. At his arraignment the next day, he was ordered held without bail, per the Daily News report. That status held for roughly two months before the bail now in place was set at the end of October.
In the days between the shooting and the surrender, Rogers had publicly pleaded for the teen to come forward. “If you're hiding him, let him go — let him face justice,” she said at a family vigil, according to ABC7 New York. She had also told News12 at the time of the shooting that she wanted justice for her grandson, calling him a boy who deserved better than what happened to him in his own building.
Part of a Wider Pattern of Teen Gun Violence
The case fits into a broader trend of young people being arrested in the city's gun violence. Gothamist reported that at least 27 teenagers were arrested in connection with fatal shootings during all of 2025, compared with 51 people over the age of 20. In a separate case, the outlet reported a suspect was at least the 18th teenager arrested for a gun homicide since January, while police had arrested at least 10 people over 20 for similar offenses.
Shootings in the area were already climbing before Billingslea was killed. NYPD data cited by News12 in August showed 17 shootings reported in the prior 28 days, compared with nine during the same period a year earlier.
For Rogers, those statistics are secondary to a much more immediate worry: the possibility of crossing paths with the teen accused of killing her grandson while simply running errands in Kingsbridge Heights. With the next court date not until Dec. 21, that uncertainty is set to continue for weeks to come.
