Why was son killed?
Stab vic’s ma: He never had problems with anyone
The grieving mom of a teenager fatally stabbed in upper Manhattan on Saturday can’t fathom why someone would kill her son
Mirna Rivas, 55, has spent the past two days fielding condolence calls from family, friends and school officials about the slaying of her son, Gerardo Rivas, in Washington Heights about 2:10 p.m. on Saturday.
“I never saw him have problems with anyone ever,” she said. “Not even an argument, nothing. I don’t understand what could have happened.”
Gerardo, 17, was stabbed in the chest by someone during an argument outside his home. He staggered a couple of blocks to W. 181st St. and St. Nicholas Ave. and flagged down a passing ambulance. He died at New York-Presbyterian Hospital Columbia.
Cops have made no arrests. “I have no idea what happened. Someone told him to come down and when he came down there was a guy there waiting for him,” Rivas said.
Cops said that before he died, Gerardo was able to say he didn’t know his attacker.
His mom was visiting a sister in New Jersey when she got the terrible call from one of her two daughters. Gerardo was her only son. “I thought he was injured but alive,” Rivas said of the call. “I never thought my son was going to die.”
Gerardo attended George Washington High School in Washington Heights and would have graduated next year.
His middle school principal called his mother, telling her, “Gerardo here at school was my student, but in the street he was my son,” she said.
“All of the teachers have been calling me, shocked, because they all really liked him at school,” Rivas said.
Gerardo had a lot of friends and loved to ride his skateboard and his moped. He recently got his driver’s license and bought an old car, proudly telling Rivas, “Mom, you don’t have to take public transportation anymore. I’ll be able to take you wherever you want.”
As for his future, he was unsure. “He had a lot of desire to overcome, to move forward,” she said.
Gerardo was well-liked among his peers.
“He never went looking for problems,” Rivas said. “I’m so surprised. I never got news that he’d gotten in a fight on the corner, for
example, and he wasn’t in a gang, either. Nothing like that.”
Rivas said she was told her son chased the person who stabbed him, possibly on his skateboard. His attackers didn’t steal anything from him.
“It wasn’t to rob him,” she said. “It was just to hurt him. The report said they punctured his lung with one stab.”
Rivas is left with her memories of a life cut short.
“He had such a clean smile, such generous eyes. This boy didn’t have any malicious feelings to do anything bad to anyone,” she said. “They even told me that when it happened, when they stabbed him, he said, maybe to the friend who was with him, ‘Tell my mom I love her.’ My daughter told me that.”
The family is preparing for the funeral later this week. They plan to bury Gerardo in New Jersey.
“Honestly, I don’t want vengeance,” Rivas said of her son’s on-the-loose killer. “It’s not that I’d forgive him, because what he did can’t be forgiven. But I hope that God forgives him. I can’t.”
Candles and other keepsakes flooded a memorial outside Gerardo’s apartment building.
“We always passed by each other around the neighborhood,” said friend Carlos Santiago, 21, staring at the candles in disbelief. “We went to the same school. I just can’t believe he’s gone.”