Long Beach teen dies on basketball court

Nicole Jessup had yet to tell her young son that his 17-year-old brother died Thursday night after collapsing while playing basketball at a Long Beach community center.

The 8-year-old, Jalen Griffin, looked up to his older sibling, Shakur Moore.

"He would follow him around," said Jessup, 37, adding: "If he played basketball, he wanted to play basketball."

Moore, a junior at Long Beach High School, was dribbling downcourt when he fell to the floor just after 8:30 p.m. at the Martin Luther King Jr. Community Center, said City Manager Charles Theofan. Moore was taken to Long Beach Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead, Theofan said.

"He simply collapsed and was lying completely motionless on the floor," Theofan said.

Moore, of Long Beach, had just finished a 5-on-5 pickup game and collapsed before another game was to start, said Desmond Moore, 15, who was about to join Shakur Moore's team.

Desmond Moore, who isn't related to Shakur, said the teen desperately pointed to his throat and chest area, indicating he couldn't breathe.

SEE PHOTOSNotable deaths: Long Islanders we recently lost

As medics treated Shakur in the ambulance, Desmond said, "He was just laying there, no moving or nothing. Everyone was just crying, saying, 'This can't be true! This can't be true!' "

Theofan said the cause of death will be determined by the medical examiner.

Jessup, a medical assistant, said her son, known as Fred, had been asthmatic since birth and until recently had been using two inhalers. But since he had not had an attack in two years, she said, his doctor said he no longer needed them.

She was in Manhattan when her son collapsed. As she frantically tried to get a cab, phone calls told her how dire the situation was, she said.

"I heard all the crying and screaming and that's how I knew," she said.

Jessup described her son as an avid sports fan, specifically of the Boston Celtics.

Moore has three sisters and two brothers, Jessup said. His father, Darryl, lives in South Carolina.

Moore played on the high school's junior varsity basketball team. The team's coach, Eric Krywe, said the teen would be missed.

"He loved basketball," he said. "He worked hard on and off the courts."

At the school, the death was fresh on students' minds.

"Everyone's sad," said 10th-grader Ryan Ramoutar, 15. "We were supposed to play basketball next week, and he ended up dying playing basketball . . . We were just talking about how me and him were going to beat everybody."

Now the teen's family is planning his funeral, and struggling to pay for the arrangements, his cousin Ieasha Galloway said.

"Today, I just woke up and I went to get the cereal," Galloway said. "And since Fred's so tall, he's the one that can reach the cereal. So I went to his room to look for him and then I realized he wasn't there."

With Joie Tyrrell

and Gary Dymski