A 14-year-old boy was fatally shot in the head as he sat in the back seat of a car near a Brooklyn intersection, police said Saturday.
Eighth-grader Chris Cantave was the second teen to be shot in Brooklyn within four hours on Friday night, cops said. Investigators were trying to determine if the two incidents were related, police sources said.
“My baby is 14 years old. He’s a baby! A baby!” Chris’ devastated mother told the Daily News Saturday. “He had three months till graduation. He couldn’t make it.”
“[I’m in] a lot of pain,” the grief-stricken mom, who wished not to be named, said. “I never knew I was gonna have this situation like this. My youngest baby, my last baby. He left me so early, so early.”
Chris, who was a student at Charles O. Dewey Middle School in Sunset Park, was sitting inside a white Mitsubishi with a friend and his friend’s father, who was driving, near the corner of 46th St. and Ninth Ave. in Sunset Park around 11:45 p.m. when another friend on a scooter rolled up alongside and started talking to them, police sources and family members said.
As they reached the intersection, they were confronted by three teens standing near the corner.
“(Chris’ friend) said some things, he said some words… and seconds later, minutes later, that’s when that s— happened,” Chris’ 24-year-old brother told the News.
After an exchange of words, one of the suspects pulled a gun and opened fire, striking Chris in the head.
The panicked father stepped on the gas and drove Chris to Maimonides Medical Center, but the teen couldn’t be saved.
Chris lived in Sunset Park, about seven blocks from where he was shot, cops said.
A good Samaritan alerted Chris’ mother and brother about the stricken teen, and they raced to the hospital and were able to see him before he passed.
“I couldn’t talk. I couldn’t talk. It was shock for me,” his mom said. “Me and my other son, we were shocked. We thought it was like a joke. Then I see that it was real. It was real.”
Family members believe Chris was hit by a stray bullet meant for one of the teen’s friends.
The three suspects ran off. No arrests have been made. Cops were scouring the area for surveillance footage that could help them identify the shooter.
Chris’ mom last saw the teen the morning he died just before she went to work, she said.
“The last words he say yesterday morning before I went to work, he said, ‘Mommy I love you,’” she said, holding onto the final memory. “I said, ‘I love you too, baby.’ And he hugged me and kissed me.”
“That’s the last words he told me,” she said.
She also remembered how he enjoyed wolfing down ice cubes from the refrigerator, so much so that she often joked she was going to take him to a doctor to get checked out.
“I said, ‘You eat ice! I’m gonna go to the doctor with you. I’m gonna ask the doctor why you keep eating ice,’” she recalled. “He said, ‘Mommy, that’s good. It’s refreshing.’ And he’d keep laughing.”
Chris’ older brother saw the teen just before 8 p.m. Chris said he was going to go out, but didn’t say where.
“I said, ‘Stay safe, bro, don’t stay out for too long,’” he recalled. “He said, ‘Alright.’”
He never spoke to Chris again. The stunned sibling couldn’t believe his last words to Chris would be so ordinary, yet so profound in light of what happened.
“(When we got to the hospital), they told us he passed away and then he came back, and they was doing surgery,” the brother recalled. “Twenty minutes after, I look in the window, just to make sure everything’s calm, and I see the doctor pumping his chest.
“I’m like, ‘Don’t let this be true! Don’t let this be true!’ Then I see them stop pumping his chest. And then he comes out with the other doctor and she whispers, ‘He’s gone.’”
“Hopefully, they get to the bottom of this,” the brother said about the ongoing investigation. “This cannot just go off just like that. There’s no way in their right mind they thought that this was a good move.
“It’s messed up,” he said. “It’s a sick world we live in. Sick world.”
Chris’ mother said she wants her son’s killer “to go to prison for life.”
“I don’t want them out — no day, no night, nothing,” she said bitterly. “My son is 14 years old. He don’t have no problems with nobody.”
Police did not immediately disclose what sparked the argument. Cops were investigating a possible gang link to the killing, sources said.
Cops are also looking into the possibility that the shooting was connected to a similar incident at 7:30 p.m. on Friday, when a 15-year-old boy was shot in the left shoulder near the corner of Bay Parkway and Kings Highway in Bensonhurst — roughly 3 miles from where Chris was shot.
The victim was blasted outside an apartment building and was rushed to Maimonides Medical Center, where he was treated. No arrests have been made.
It wasn’t immediately clear if the two shootings were connected, an NYPD spokesman said.
Chris’ brother agreed that his brother’s shooting might have been some kind of crew beef, yet said Chris wasn’t into the gang life.
“He was like a street kid, but he’s not into that gang stuff,” his brother said. “He was all about bettering his path, doing the right thing. He was not on that drama s—.”
The older sibling warned Chris “many times” to stay away from gangs.
Chris loved video games and tinkering on his moped, his brother said. The young teen was thinking about going to a trade school to learn about becoming a mechanic.
“I’m speechless,” his brother said. “I really don’t know what to say. My emotions are everywhere. My mind’s all over.”
“I’m going to miss everything about him,” he added softly, “every single detail.”
