My troubled, slain son was still a kid at heart, says ma

In March, her 19-year-old son, Javon Craig, was killed outside the Risley Dent Towers in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn — 47 steps from the spot where her older son Rasheed Craig was killed eight years earlier at age 20.

The slaying of his older brother inflamed Javon and sent him down the wrong path.

“When his brother got killed, he really started falling off,” the mom said. “I still don’t think he knew how to deal with it. Any little thing would piss him off. It messed our family up.”

Javon lost interest in school and was arrested 12 times, but Craig never thought it would put his life at risk.

“They robbed and murdered my baby over a dice game,” she said. “You could’ve shot him in the leg or foot or something. You didn’t have to take him out of the world.”

While her sons are both gone and buried, their killers remain on the loose.

When the memorials are over and the bodies are in the ground, an unseen tragedy continues for the survivors. For many of these families and friends, the nightmare is just beginning.

Four months after Chantel Allen’s only son, Tylik, was shot to death on the last night of September, the 34-year-old Harlem mom is still crippled by grief.

“(His killer) on Christmas Day is gonna open up presents and my son is going to be 6 feet under the ground with a blanket on him,” Allen said in an interview last month. “Why can’t you just come out the grave and hug me?”

Tylik, 18, was shot after responding to a call to leave their building lobby and step outside.

Friends faithfully relied upon him for a joke or dance move to cheer them up. He was a young man so self-assured that it inspired confidence in his classmates.

His popularity, even in death, is evident to all visitors to a King Towers lobby, where his nickname, Ty Millz, and catch phrase, #KeepItMilly, adorn the walls with hundreds of handwritten messages stretching from floor to ceiling.

Reminders of Tylik’s truncated life dominate his mother’s twobedroom apartment. Photos of him adorn the walls, the fridge, the back of the front door and a living room shrine.

Dozens of condolence letters crowd the kitchen table. Prayer cards hang from the lamps. His football helmet, signed in silver Sharpie by friends and teammates, sits atop the cupboard.

The slain teen’s likeness is even tattooed on his mother’s chest.

“I was hospitalized for 15 days

Alyssa Rodriguez (left), 17, was found shot in hallway of her Brooklyn building in early November. WEEKS AFTER HER son John Fernandez, 17, was shot to death in Brooklyn, his mother lives in fear — afraid his killer might be living just blocks from her home.“It’s been a month of horror,” said Maria Padilla, 43.Fernandez (photo right) — dressed in all black and wearing a ski mask — was found dead on Bainbridge St. in BedfordStuyvesant on Dec. 7. His family believes an associate in the Gorilla Stone Apes, a Bloods-affiliated gang, turned on Fernandez, shooting him in the back after tricking him into thinking they were all going to commit a robbery together.Fernandez had run into trouble with the law, developed an addiction to painkillers, and dropped out of high school after his freshman year. Still, Padilla said, her son was very much a kid at heart.“All he did was play his (PlayStation 4),” she said. “He was still playing with Legos.”Relatives said Fernandez fell under the influence of the local gang“He would believe anything anybody told him,” the mom said. “Those people were his gods. They turned him into what they are and then they got rid of him.”Padilla said she will not rest easy until her son’s killers have been brought to justice.“The only thing I want is for the person or people involved in what happened to him to pay for it,” she said. Adam Shrier