grant housing project
Tayshana Murphy, a promising, young girls basketball star, was shot dead Sunday morning in New York in what appears to be a case of mistaken identity. NYC.gov

Tayshana Murphy, a promising, young girls basketball star, was shot dead Sunday morning in New York in what appears to be a case of mistaken identity.

18-year-old Murphy was shot in the head by a gunman in the Harlem housing project she lived in after an altercation early Sunday morning.

Murphy's friend, Teka Taylor, told the New York Daily News that a gunman mistook her someone else in an unrelated altercation as she tried to escape the shooter in the fourth floor hallway of her building.

She was pleading for her life, Taylor told the Daily News. She was saying, 'No, please, I don't have nothing to do with it.'

Tayshana Murphy was pronounced dead on the scene as a crowd of 75 neighbors gathered outside the building, Grant Houses, in Harlem.

Murphy just began her senior year at Murry Bergtraum High School on Thursday where she was on a basketball scholarship. She was known as one of the most promising girls basketball players and her family told the Daily News that she was in the early stages of being recruited from several colleges.

There were no arrests and the investigation is ongoing in the shooting of Tayshana Murphy.