A 19-year-old already facing attempted-murder charges for allegedly shooting a teenager walked free on minimal bail, and now stands accused of shooting someone else near Brooklyn's West Indian Day Parade barely a month later.
Nayshawn Wilkinson was hauled out of the 77th Precinct in Brooklyn on Tuesday, wearing a shirt emblazoned with Nike's "JUST DO IT" slogan, and taken to court to face a fresh set of attempted-murder charges. The new case stems from a Monday afternoon shooting near the corner of St. Johns Place and Nostrand Avenue, along the West Indian Day Parade route, where a 24-year-old man was struck by a bullet in the buttocks. Whether the victim was the intended target remains unclear.
What is clear is how Wilkinson came to be on the street at all. On July 22, prosecutors say, he fired a gun twice at a 15-year-old boy in front of the Callahan-Kelly playground in Brownsville. The teenager took a bullet wound to the foot, a.22-caliber fragment was later recovered from the wound, and required surgery. Wilkinson was arrested and charged with attempted murder, assault, and gun offenses. The Brooklyn District Attorney's Office asked the court to remand him, hold him without bail.
Brooklyn Criminal Court Judge Janice Robinson had other ideas. On August 4, she set bail at just $5,000 cash or a $10,000 bond. Wilkinson posted it and walked out.
Less than a month later, he allegedly shot someone else.
A law-enforcement source told the New York Post what many in the city's police ranks already feel:
"This is proof of what happens when you let shooters back on the street. Another bite at the apple, and someone is shot this time."
The same source added:
"At 19 years old, there's a demonstrated lack of fear for the consequences of violating the terms of his release."
The timing carried its own grim irony. On the same Tuesday that Wilkinson was being moved from the precinct to face new charges, Brooklyn prosecutors were scheduled to announce that they had secured a grand jury indictment against him for the July playground shooting. He was already back in custody before they could make that announcement, arrested for an entirely separate alleged attempted murder.
Judge Robinson's handling of the Wilkinson bail hearing was not an isolated call. A New York Post review of 13 defendants arraigned before her found that more than half, eight, left the courthouse without any bail at all. Two of those eight had been charged with attempted murder. The remaining five faced bail amounts low enough that every one of them posted it.
Among the cases that study flagged: Adrian Benitez, a 29-year-old accused of opening fire during a dispute with another man. A stray bullet from that incident allegedly struck a 7-year-old Labradoodle named Honey, a service dog belonging to a woman with Down syndrome. Prosecutors asked Robinson for $150,000 bail. She released Benitez on nothing more than a promise to return to court on November 24.
Robinson, a Brooklyn-born daughter of Jamaican immigrants, won election to the bench in 2024 and took a seat in Brooklyn's civil court on January 1, 2025. Before turning to politics, she spent the first 20 years of her legal career as a lawyer for insurance companies. Her uncle, Nick Perry, served as a Democrat in the New York state Assembly for nearly 30 years, representing parts of East Flatbush, Canarsie, and Brownsville, and later served briefly as U.S. Ambassador to Jamaica.
None of that background explains why a judge would override prosecutors' explicit request to hold an accused teenage gunman and instead send him home for $5,000.
The human cost of this decision sits in two hospital beds. A 15-year-old boy at a Brownsville playground took a bullet to the foot in July and went through surgery to have the fragment removed. A 24-year-old man near the West Indian Day Parade route took a bullet to the buttocks on Monday. Both shootings are now charged as attempted murders. Both allegedly involve the same defendant.
Wilkinson was awaiting arraignment on the new charges as of Tuesday. He already faced an indictment on the old ones. The Brooklyn DA's office has not disclosed the full list of charges tied to the parade-route shooting beyond attempted murder.
The law-enforcement source summed up the frustration in five words:
"Are we even surprised at this point?"
Bail exists to ensure a defendant returns to court, not to give an accused shooter a window to find another target. When judges ignore prosecutors and the next headline writes itself, the system has not failed by accident, it has failed by choice.
