Ma’s ‘unbearable pain’
Nursing student son, who battled own mental illness, slain
A man shot to death on a Queens street had been battling back from mental illness — and resisting attempts to recruit him into a violent gang, his mother said Monday.
Michael Navarrette, 22, died at Jamaica Hospital on Sunday, a day after he and another man were shot at Guy Brewer Blvd. and 108th Ave. in Jamaica.
“I’ve been devastated by this,” said Navarrette’s mother, Kim DiQuattro.
“I spent the whole morning in his room, looking at his clothes, sniffing his clothes and looking at his pictures and all his stuff. The essence of Michael. And it’s hard, it really is very difficult for me. I’ve been breaking down a lot. The pain is unbearable.”
DiQuattro said her son was recovering from a long history of mental health problems while studying to be a nurse and working catering jobs.
“He was back on track,” she said. “He was trying to get to therapy and trying to do the right thing. We were as close as we possibly could be, but we were having difficulties because I wanted him to get help. And nicely enough, he was doing it.”
Police said video surveillance shows a man with a mask talking with the two victims moments before the 12:50 a.m. shooting. DiQuattro says cops told her the video seems to show the bullet came from across the street and not from close range, suggesting her son may have been the victim of a stray bullet.
“Basically he was just standing there and he caught the bullet from someone else,” she said.
Navarrette, who lived with his mom in Kew Gardens, was struck in the head, and a 28-year-old man was hit in the leg. The second victim was taken to Jamaica Hospital in stable condition.
DiQuattro learned of the shooting when her son’s friends started posting on Facebook about it, sending her into a panic. “I tried calling him and his phone was going to voice mail,” she said. “So we rushed to the hospital. It was pretty awful.”
DiQuattro said there were people trying to get her son into a gang, but she wasn’t sure if those attempts were related to the shooting.
“He did have friends that were involved in things and they were trying to get him in, I believe, but he was resisting,” DiQuattro said.
“He refused, and he got beat up about a month and a half ago. He didn’t tell me. He never tells me these things, but I found out from his girlfriend that he was beat up by gang members.”
“His girlfriend wouldn’t have it,” DiQuattro added. “His girlfriend was very instrumental in keeping
Michael on the straight and narrow.”
Navarrette had been arrested 10 times, but eight of those cases were sealed, police sources said. The other two arrests were for petty larceny and violating a local law.
He was enrolled in a nursing program at LaGuardia Community College, his mother said, and taking virtual classes up until he died.
DiQuattro said her son wanted to be a psychiatric nurse after he was helped by a nurse and a psychiatrist at New York-Presbyterian Hospital following a suicide attempt.
“He never forgot that nurse,” DiQuattro said. “Michael had always wanted to do something where he could help people and make lots of money. So I said you could be a doctor, because then his grades warranted being a doctor. But when he became bipolar, Michael changed.”
Despite the challenges,
DiQuattro said, Navarrette was still dedicated to finding a profession where he could make a difference.
“He said he thought he could help people like him,” she said.
Even in death, Michael will be helping others, she said.
“I didn’t know my son signed up to donate his organs,” DiQuattro said. “It’s a wonderful thing that he’s doing and I’m glad that he did it actually. I think that maybe he’ll help someone, I hope, with his heart and kidneys and lungs. That’s probably one of the only things that’s comforting in this whole situation.”
DiQuattro said Jamaica Hospital had allowed her to come in and see her dying son, despite coronavirus restrictions barring most visitors.
“I said, ‘I have to see my son, he’s my only son,’ ” she said. “They gave me a compassion visit. I was bedside most of the time.”