Shaheem Bascom was 18 years old, and the thing that got him killed was a text from someone he thought was a friend. Five years later, the man who chased him down and shot him in the back is going to prison for 22 years to life.
Ricardo Dash, 25, of Bedford-Stuyvesant, was sentenced this month after a jury convicted him of second-degree murder in December, according to the Brooklyn District Attorney’s office. The crime itself dates to the night of May 10, 2021.
According to prosecutors, Bascom was trading messages on Facebook Messenger with a 16-year-old girl he knew, who lured him to a spot in East New York. Waiting there were members of the 8 Trey Crips, who had planned to rob and assault him. When Bascom realized what was happening and tried to run, a co-defendant struck him, Dash chased after him, and Dash shot him in the back.
The weapon was a gun, but the trap was a phone. An invitation from a familiar name, a location, and a teenager walking into an ambush he had no way to see coming. Until the shooting, it looked like nothing.
After the shooting, prosecutors say Dash mocked it in multiple Facebook posts, then left New York entirely and stayed on the run for seven months. He was finally arrested in Henry County, Georgia, in December 2021 by NYPD investigators working with U.S. Marshals, and brought back to Brooklyn to face trial.
The sentence closes the case. The lure that killed Shaheem Bascom was ordinary: a message, a name he trusted, a place to meet.
Featured image: Photo: Supplied/Sora Shimazaki via Pexels
