By ELVA RAMIREZ, AUSTIN FENNER and CARRIE MELAGO
With additional reporting by Jonathan Lemire

With one of the biggest games of his career only hours away, Georgetown basketball player Jessie Sapp's thoughts weren't on the court - they were with his little sister.

Thirteen-year-old Steveasia Perry was in the pediatric ICU at Weill Cornell Medical Center yesterday, recovering from a gunshot wound that fractured her jaw.

Sapp, who played in the Sweet Sixteen round of the NCAA Tournament last night, took time to call his sister before the game.
Steveasia and friend Pedro Corsero, 13, were struck when a gunman targeting another teen sprayed bullets inside a playground in East Harlem late Thursday.
"She's strong. She's doing well. She's recovering," said her father, Michael Ralling. "She's in good spirits."

Meanwhile, 16-year-old suspect Gerald Thompson was charged with two counts each of attempted murder, reckless endangerment and assault.

Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said the suspect lost a fistfight with another teen over a girl earlier in the day. Bent on revenge, he went home, got a gun, then shot wildly around the playground near the Woodrow Wilson Houses.

Steveasia and Pedro were among a group of teens watching a basketball game on the nearby courts around 7 p.m. The bullet entered her upper back and traveled to her face, fracturing her jaw. Pedro was hit in the right knee and was released from the hospital yesterday afternoon.

Before he left, Pedro sat on Steveasia's hospital bed, gave his friend a hug and said, "I hope you get better," he told the Daily News.

Pedro's stepfather, Glenn Richardson, 40, decried the street violence that could have left his son dead.

"I'm blessed. I praise God because it could have been worse," he said. "I feel sorry for the people who did this because they are sick."

Steveasia, a dancer and the youngest of eight siblings, was scheduled to sing tomorrow at the East Ward Missionary Baptist Church.

Instead, her family kept vigil at the hospital, while her brother readied for his team's matchup with the University of Florida in Indianapolis.

The 6-foot-3 guard, a freshman at Georgetown, told The News in 2004 that he attended high school at National Christian Academy in Maryland to avoid the distraction of life at the Woodrow Wilson Houses.

"It's bigger than who her brother is," said Truasia Sapp, 25, Steveasia's sister. "The bigger picture is you have two young kids caught in the crossfire."