A Queens high school hoops team which plays a game each year in honor of a standout player who was gunned down in 2019 hosted the memorial competition for the final time Saturday — with the late teen’s father suiting up for his son in what the family said was the final memorial contest for the boy.
Aamir Griffin was set to play on the Bayside school’s varsity team before he was fatally shot on Oct. 26, 2019. He was 14.
“He didn’t even get a chance to do all the great things that was coming for him. He was going to be someone great,” the teen’s mom, Shanequa Griffin, 42, told The Post.
The annual memorial match-up held has been held each of the past five years between Griffin’s Benjamin N. Cardozo High School Judges, and rotating opponents.
“I haven’t been able to grieve properly so I feel like this should be my last memorial, so I can grieve myself as a mom,” she added, explaining the decision to bring the yearly memorial games to a close.
On Saturday, as the Judges faced off against the NYPD Blue Chips at the Baisley Park Houses in South Jamaica where Griffin was killed, the teen’s father, Warnell Wells, 42, subbed in to play in son’s honor while wearing a Cardozo #2 jersey — the same as his son’s.
Griffin would’ve graduated in June and been attending college by now, “hopefully on a basketball scholarship,” said Cardozo coach Ron Naclerio, who organized the memorial games with NYPD Det. Tanya Duhaney.
Griffin’s killer, the reputed Money World street gang member Sean Brown, opened fire on the teen while he was playing basketball after he mistook him for a rival gangbanger, Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz’s office previously said.
Brown fled to Los Angeles before being busted there by the LA County’s sheriff deputies and was extradited back to the Big Apple in 2021.
In April, Brown was sentenced to 30 years in prison after pleading guilty to manslaughter, conspiracy and weapons charges in connection to the fatal shooting.
