The teenager, Kahton Anderson, had apparently aimed at a rival on the bus, but instead killed a man returning home from work.
"Who did I hit?" he asked the police after his arrest. "Was it a rival or an innocent man? Why didn't I just go home?"
On Friday, the teenager pleaded not guilty at his arraignment in state Supreme Court in Brooklyn on charges of murder in the second degree. He is being tried as an adult and is being held without bail.
The dispute that led to the March 20 shooting was apparently a spat between teenage crews, mini-gangs that form within housing projects or neighbourhood blocks.
But the bullet went astray and killed Angel Rojas, a married father of two heading home in between his jobs.
"Kahton's culpability has to be considered in light of all the circumstances," Anderson's lawyer, Frederic Pratt, said. Of the rivals that got on the bus, Pratt said, "they appeared to be armed, and they were coming to confront him, and he feared for his life."
In his statement to investigators, a prosecutor's summary of which was made public in a court filing Friday, Kahton said: "They came at me on the bus, and I was scared. Yo, am I gonna do life for this?" He added, "It's a war out here."
At the hearing, Pratt asked prosecutors to make some information in news accounts of the case available to him. His request included comments by the police that girls on the bus where the shooting occurred told members of a rival gang that Kahton was sitting in the bus, and that scouts were then sent to make sure he was there.
Rojas was riding toward the front of the B15 bus in northern Brooklyn speaking on his cellphone, while the teenager was sitting several rows behind him. Shortly after three young men boarded the bus, the police have said, Kahton took out a .357 revolver and fired once. A video of the confrontation showed Rojas slumping forward after suffering a mortal wound.
Kenneth P Thompson, the Brooklyn district attorney, said in an earlier statement that Rojas "did not deserve to die so tragically, and we will hold the defendant Kahton Anderson responsible for taking the life of this innocent and hard-working man."
© 2014, The New York Times News Service
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