Son shot in Bx. dustup, dad has heart attack

A BRONX family was reeling from twin tragedies Friday after a 34-yearold man died of a gunshot wound on the same day his father suffered a fatal heart attack.

The son, Duro Akil , took a bullet to the torso Monday night when a man fired a shot through a door in the victim’s Williamsbridge building after getting into a fight with a neighbor, cops said.

The father of two, a Fresh Direct deliveryman, was rushed to Jacobi Medical Center with a punctured lung. He died two days later.

When his devastated family returned to the scene of the shooting Wednesday to tell his 54-year-old father, Okera Ras I, they found him lifeless in bed.

“We were in the middle of the street screaming. In shock,” said Akil’s sister Makini Akil, 23.

“It was like something out of a movie scene.”

Makini Akil said the family is convinced that Ras I, a longtime Fox News network web video producer who rode with his son to the hospital following the shooting, died of a broken heart.

The city medical examiner told the family the autopsy showed he likely suffered a heart attack.

“It was really too much for him,” the daughter added. “It was really like heartbreak.”

The bloodshed was set in motion when an upstairs neighbor forced an unwanted visitor out of the two-story brick building on E. 219th St. near White Plains Road.

The man stomped over to his car, grabbed a gun, and stormed back to the front door, cops said. The gunman then pounded on the locked front door before smashing its top window with the pistol’s handle.

Alarmed by the banging, Duro Akil, his brother and father came out into the hallway — unaware that the man on the other side of the door was carrying a gun. The man opened fire, striking Akil.

“The way this happened, it’s stupid,” said Daquan Johnson, 27, the brother of the neighbor who quarreled with the shooter. “It was ego. That’s all it was.” The killer jumped into a car and sped off. Police have identified him but were still hunting for him Friday night.

Makini Akil said her brother, the oldest of five siblings and a graduate of Beacon High School, loved sports and had a passion for journalism and creative writing.

Ras I held a bachelor’s degree from Morehouse College in Atlanta and a master’s degree in communications from New York University. Makini Akil said he recently left Fox News to pursue several entrepreneurial endeavors, including producing a film on the meaning of Kwanzaa.

Ras I also deejayed events in the community and led a monthly healing retreat, his daughter said.

“There are so many people who can speak to how giving and wellliked he was,”she said.