Killed over six beers
Cops shoot 18-yr.-old after holdup
A PELLET-GUN-toting teen killed by cops after a Brooklyn robbery Sunday was a collegebound kid with dreams of being a social worker, his family said.
Police said he died over six bottles of beer.
Surveillance pictures show Sergio Reyes pointing what turned out to be a pellet gun at a Bushwick bodega clerk just after midnight before raising the same weapon at police just moments later, officials said.
Reyes, 18, was shot several times outside the Garden Deli & Grill at Irving Ave. and Starr St.
Cops said he was trying to steal five bottles of Corona and a Heineken.
“The suspect had a black firearm in his hand and raised it toward the officers,” said NYPD Chief of Patrol Terence Monahan.
“The officers fired at the suspect and struck him multiple times.”
Reyes was rushed to Woodhull Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead.
Reyes’ father, Antonio Tlapanco, 48, said he had no answers to explain the suspect in the video or the gun that looks more deadly than it actually is.
“We want to know what happened,” Tlapanco said “He was a good kid. He wasn’t an animal. They didn’t try to stop him. They shot to kill. His body was riddled with bullets.
“People are saying he had a plastic gun. I never saw anything like that around the house. Every afternoon when he got home from school I inspected his backpack to make sure he was OK. I do with all of my children. If I would had seen it, I would have corrected his actions.”
Tlapanco said his son was a senior at Leadership & Public Service High School in Manhattan, and that he was applying to colleges.
“He wanted to become a social worker,” the distraught dad said. “He was happy. He was looking forward going to school. Now I lost him.”
Store clerk Mohamed Ali said he didn’t see an accomplished student with a bright future on the other side of the counter.
He saw a man with a gun, and he said the gun looked real.
“I don’t want to die for no reason, for the beer,” Ali said, before learning the suspect had died. “These young guys, they do this stuff. It’s not even worth it, for the beer.”
Monahan said the three cops involved in the shooting were part of a plainclothes anti-crime team assigned to the 83rd Precinct.
They were responding to a 911 call about a robbery in the store when they spotted the suspect.
It was the second shooting by police in Brooklyn in a week.
On Thursday, three plainclothes cops exchanged fire with a 17-year-old near the Cypress Hills Houses in East New York. The boy was killed and later identified as Kadeem Torres.