Ex-Mount Vernon basketball star shot; police blame gangs

• Mount Vernon basketball standout shot and wounded.
• He was an innocent bystander, police said.

MOUNT VERNON – Isaiah Cousins, a former Mount Vernon basketball standout and current guard with the University of Oklahoma Sooners, was wounded Tuesday night when an errant bullet from one of two warring street gangs struck him in the back of the shoulder, police said.

Cousins is expected to recover without surgery, Oklahoma basketball head coach Lon Kruger said of his starter.

"He should be healed in a few weeks and begin summer activities with the rest of the team in June," Kruger said in a statement tweeted by Oklahoma Basketball. "We're very thankful it wasn't worse than it was."

Cousins has the potential to be a top NBA draft choice, said Lowes Moore, a former NBA player and the executive director of the Boys & Girls Club of Mount Vernon, which Cousins attended as a child.

Moore likened Cousins to another tall point guard, Russell Westbrook, a star Oklahoma City Thunder player, and said Cousins likely will use the shoulder injury as motivation.

"He's resilient," Moore said. "Even as a little kid, he played with that chip, he lived with that chip. He wants to be good."

Cousins' high school coach, Bob Cimmino of Mount Vernon, said that Cousins was a good person who often stopped back by the high school when he returned home for the summer.

Cousins was taken to Jacobi Medical Center in the Bronx for treatment.

The 6-foot-4 sophomore Sooner was known as "Mr. Basketball" in Mount Vernon, where he averaged 15.8 points per game as a senior. He was the Section 1 MVP in his senior year.

Police said he was an innocent bystander caught in the gunplay between the "Goonies" and "Gunnas" street gangs.

Mount Vernon Police Commissioner Terrance Raynor said police were putting together a plan Wednesday to stop the gang violence.

"This stuff doesn't stop on its own," the commissioner said. "If it takes a task force, that is what we are going to do. We have to be proactive."

The commissioner said there was already a plan in place to have Westchester County police patrol the tough areas of Mount Vernon this summer. He said Mount Vernon police are not waiting for the summer, however, and want to put pressure on the violent street gangs right away.

According to police, the war between the street gangs started Monday night when Tyshaw Gentle, 18, of Mount Vernon, and a reputed member of the Goonies, fired several shots, striking three cars.

No one was injured, but Gentle was arrested on charges of criminal mischief and reckless endangerment after police found a video they said allowed them to identify him as the shooter.

On Tuesday night, the shooting war continued.

Cousins was with a group near 7 W. Third Street — Levister Towers — that had nothing to do with the gang warfare, police said. The Goonies and Gunnas were about a half-block to a block away — around Third Street and Third Avenue — when one fired a shot, striking the athlete.

Staff writer Hoa Nguyen contributed to this report.