Mom of slain basketball player Kinu Rochford demands justice at Brooklyn vigil 9%
By Kerry Burke37% Roni Jacobson68% Colin Mixson69%
7/15/2026, 1:08:08 PM
BS Summary: This article contains 24 faulty reasoning types, including Anecdotal, Appeal to Emotion, and Halo Effect, with Biased Writer Voice as the most egregious example at 36% saturation with 232 hits. Analysis detected 1,260 faulty-reasoning hits from 645 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 25.3% and a BS Rank of 9% (15,211 of 16,550 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 91.90% of the article peer group.
The mother of a former pro basketball player gunned down during a neighborhood tournament in Harlem demanded justice at a vigil for her son.
Kinu Rochford, 35, was shot in the head while arguing with a gunman at the Kingdome tournament at NYCHA’s King Towers on Lenox Ave. near W. 112th St. about 10:20 p.m.
Friday, cops said.
The killer remains on the loose.
“I need to find who did this to my baby,” the victim’s mother, Eden Rochford, told the hundreds who gathered at Banneker Playground in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, Tuesday evening for a Zone 6 elite summer league men’s basketball tournament held in her son's honor.
“I need justice for him.
And my message is, if you know something, if you saw something.
I need you to say something.”
Born just moments before his brother and sister, Kinu was a triplet raised in East Flatbush, his mother said.
He is also a father who leaves behind a 17-month-old son.
“He has a beautiful young son who looks just like him,” Eden said.
He's now the, what can I say?
The quadruple,” she said of Kinu’s son.
“We have to keep the memory of the triplets going so now we've added him.
He's a quadruple.”
The grieving mom recalled buying a child-sized basketball and a Mattel plastic hoop set for her triplets when they were just infants.
The toys set Kinu on a trajectory that led him to play pro ball at arenas in Norway, Britain, Iceland and, ultimately, to the hardcourt where he lost his life.
“From 6 months (old) till his unfortunate demise, Kinu was always playing basketball,” his mother said.
The star forward played for James Madison High School and Globe Tech and Fairleigh Dickinson University in New Jersey before embarking on a professional career in 2013 with Aris Leeuwarden in the Dutch Basketball League.
He also played in the British Basketball League, as well as for teams in Iceland and Portugal, before finishing his professional career with the Golden Eagle Ylli in the Kosovo Basketball Superleague in 2021.
As news of his murder spreads across the globe, Rochford's family has been inundated with condolences from abroad.
“Some of his coaches from Portugal, Switzerland, England, Africa, Spain have been reaching out,” Eden said.
“We are devastated.
It's very hard.”
After Rochford decided to end his overseas basketball career due to a hip injury, he sought out community work on the advice of a friend and joined non-profit Win, the city's largest provider of family shelter and supportive housing, as a social worker.
His mother has been blown away since his murder by stories of the lives her son had touched.
“I had no idea that Kinu was out here helping so many people,” the mom said.
“That makes me very proud.”
The victim’s brother told the crowd gathered for the memorial game on Tuesday that his brother loved all of them — and would have dominated them on the court if he were still alive.
“I know he'd own this competition,” said Kairo Rochford.
“So this is a tough loss for Brooklyn.
This is a tough loss for my family.
And this is a tough loss for this whole 6 family as well.”
The gunman shot Kinu as the two argued on the sidelines of the Harlem tournament, a police source said.
Also wounded in the shooting were two bystanders, a 28-year-old man struck in the shin and a 22-year-old woman hit in the right forearm.
Medics rushed Kinu to Mount Sinai Morningside but he could not be saved.
The two wounded survivors were taken to Harlem Hospital and are expected to recover.
NYPD detectives believe Kinu was the gunman’s intended target.
Kinu and his killer may have been arguing over a woman they both knew, a police source said.
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