Brooklyn man arrested on murder charge in NYCHA killing, NYPD says

Police have charged a 28-year-old Brooklyn man with murder after they say he shot and killed another man at a public housing complex in the borough earlier this month.

The NYPD says Aaron Granton shot 32-year-old Deon Williams at NYCHA’s Sumner Houses in Bedford-Stuyvesant on July 13. Police arrested Granton on Saturday.

Both men were listed as living down the block from each other at the complex. Charging documents shared by the Brooklyn district attorney’s office state that the city’s medical examiner determined that Williams died of a gunshot wound to the heart.

Granton was charged in Brooklyn Criminal Court with second-degree murder and multiple counts of criminal possession of a weapon. Neither police nor prosecutors said whether the men knew each other, or what led to the shooting.

NYPD officers found Williams unconscious and unresponsive with a gunshot wound to his torso around 6:30 p.m. on July 13, according to the department. Emergency medical workers transported him to Kings County Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

Court records show Granton pleaded not guilty to the charges at his arraignment on Saturday and was ordered held without bail. He is due back in court on Thursday.

The attorney listed for him in the case said on Monday that he no longer represented Granton, who was being assigned another lawyer.

Shooting data analyzed by Gothamist for the period from 2020 to June 2024 shows there were more than a dozen shootings in the immediate vicinity of the incident in that time.