The father of a 24-year-old man gunned down near Brooklyn’s Prospect Park has spent his life as a youth mentor working to save kids from violence in the streets — but is devastated he wasn’t able to save his own son.
“You can only imagine. When you can save other kids, but you can’t save your own child,” Eric Manson, the father of Ramel Ingram, told the Daily News.
“How about that? Can you imagine that?”
Manson, who raised Ingram and his brother as a single father, said he made a career mentoring and coaching young kids in the Fort Greene, Brooklyn community, aiming to keep them out of trouble.
“I lost my son to this, something I’ve been trying to prevent,” he said.
Ramel Ingram, 24, was running away from an attacker when he was fatally shot in front of his apartment building on Crooke Ave. near Ocean Ave. in Flatbush, Brooklyn, on Sept. 17. (Theodore Parisienne / New York Daily News)
Manson said Ramel had recently begun a training program at the Taj Gibson Foundation’s Fort Greene community center to become a youth mentor himself.
“It’s all about mentoring and keeping the kids off the street, inspiring them to get into graphics, or music, or arts,” Manson said. “We’re trying to create a safe place to keep the older kids off the street so we don’t have the situation we have right now.”
A 21-year-old gunman, Kindle Akinola, shot Ingram multiple times in the chest at about 8:45 p.m. Sept. 17 in front of his grandmother’s apartment where he had been living, two blocks from the southeastern edge of Prospect Park in Flatbush, cops said.
Ramel Ingram, 24, was fatally shot in front of his apartment building on Crooke Ave. near Ocean Ave. in Flatbush, Brooklyn, on Sept. 17. (Theodore Parisienne / New York Daily News)
Ingram’s grandmother, Cynthia Ingram said he had just finished helping her clean up the apartment on Crooke Ave. apartment near Ocean Ave. and showered before telling her he was stepping outside.
“[He] said ‘Grandma I’m going downstairs.’ He wasn’t outside that long and I heard shots,” the grandmother recalled. “I asked my daughter, ‘Is he in his room?’ I called his phone and didn’t get no answer.”
After hearing someone call her name from outside she rushed downstairs to find Ingram bleeding on the ground.
“He wasn’t talking. I know that he was conscious. When I was calling him, slapping his face, his eyes were rolling,” she said. “And then somebody, a young lady, gave me her shirt to put pressure on his chest.”
Ramel Ingram, 24, was fatally shot in front of his apartment building on Crooke Ave. near Ocean Ave. in Flatbush, Brooklyn, on Sept. 17. (Theodore Parisienne / New York Daily News)
Medics rushed Ingram to Kings County Hospital but he could not be saved.
“My reaction to what happened is numbness. He was killed on my doorstep,” Cynthia Ingram said. “What type of reaction am I supposed to have? His blood is on my doorstep. I’m numb.”
Akinola was arrested and charged the next day with murder and criminal possession of a weapon. A Brooklyn criminal court judge held him without bail.
It was not immediately clear what the killer’s motive was or if he knew Ingram, but the two lived less than a ten minute walk apart from each other, cops said.
Ramel Ingram, 24, was fatally shot in front of his apartment building on Crooke Ave. near Ocean Ave. in Flatbush, Brooklyn, on Sept. 17. (Theodore Parisienne / New York Daily News)
Ingram leaves behind his father, grandmother and a younger brother. His mother died of sickle cell anemia crisis when he was only 15 months old and Manson raised him as a single father.
“I spoke to my son every day, three or four times a day. I’m one of those dads. I was on my job. I’ve been there all his life,” Manson said. “I’m a full-time dad, not part-time.”
Manson said Ramel excelled at football and basketball growing up, and had recently spent his summer volunteering his time coaching his younger brother’s basketball team during their off-season.
“He’s known all up and down I-95. He played high-level AAU basketball, which was a traveling program. He’s very well known in the state and city of New York,” Manson said.
In adulthood Ingram found his calling managing several of his aspiring rapper friends, and hoped to one day make a career managing artists.
“He had some skills. That was his passion. I really instilled both of my boys with entrepreneurship,” Manson said. “He wasn’t into working for nobody. He was figuring out how to start a business of his own.”
Ramel Ingram. (Metro-BDA Wolves)
Ingram’s grandmother, who called the victim her “pride and joy” described him as well-mannered and respectful.
“He had a lot of structure and well-manneredness with him. Ramel was very respectable. ‘Yes ma’am,’ ‘Yes sir.’ If you asked him to do something, he didn’t argue with you. He did what you asked him to do, didn’t give you any back talk, anything like that,” she said. “He was a clown, and he was very funny. [He] liked to joke around.”
Originally Published: September 28, 2025 at 6:00 AM EDT