Slain tot’s dad makes tearful plea for peace

The father of a toddler fatally struck by a stray bullet during a Brooklyn barbecue in July weeps and pleads for “change’’ in an online video posted by the NYPD Monday.

“My 1-year-old son was a victim to gun violence,’’ Davell Gardner (inset) says of his boy, Da- vell Jr., who was killed in an incident that shook the city, even as it was already being rocked by a surge in slayings.

Gardner describes his shock at learning his baby was shot.

“That night, planning his second birthday party, talking to him, hearing him outside playing, and for just that night to hear a phone call that he was shot in the stomach,’’ the dad says of his son in the clip, which was tweeted out by the head of the Police Department’s Community Affairs Bureau, Chief Jeffrey Maddrey.

“And the doctors just come in and just tell me my son is gone. It just took me to another world. I just couldn’t believe it,’’ Gardner says.

“I just felt like I was living a nightmare and I couldn’t wake up. I just felt lost. I was in a dark place.’’

The distraught dad then breaks down and says, “I’m sorry’’ as he tries to compose himself.

“There’s just days that I wake up, and I just hope and pray . . . just to see him, just to hear his voice.

“I lost my firstborn, my baby boy,’’ he says, crying again.

“Help make a change,’’ Gardner urges the public.

“This has to stop. This has to. I had to bury my son.

“There’s a lot of parents out there [who] have to bury their kids. Help make a change.’’

The NYPD said earlier this month that it has identified two suspects in Davell Jr.’s death, although the men have yet to be charged.

They are behind bars for two unrelated killings they allegedly committed separately after the toddler’s shooting.

Gardner’s plea comes as the Big Apple is continuing to be battered by a spike in shootings and killings amid soaring gang violence.