Baby Davell’s slay witnesses gun-shy

Witnesses to the stray-bullet slaying of Brooklyn baby Davell Gardner may be afraid to come forward for fear of retribution by those involved, NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea said Tuesday.

Department sources previously told The Post a street code of silence and witness worries of being outed by state discovery laws were contributing to a lack of arrests since the horrific July 12 murder.

“I think people know who did that case,” Shea said in a press briefing Tuesday.

He said that authorities are “trying to get prosecutions when you have, at times, lessthan-willing . . . witnesses and other people involved.”

Investigators have said that Davell, two months shy of his second birthday, was a collateral victim of a long-running war between rival Bedford-Stuyvesant gangs.

The toddler was at a family cookout near Raymond Bush Playground on July 12 when a stray slug fatally struck his stomach. Investigators have previously said that two men awaiting trial on unrelated murder cases were suspected in Davell’s killing. But a lawenforcement source has since said that one of those men no longer appears to have been involved, while the other remains uncharged.

“I would say we know who does the shooting 80 to 90 percent of the time,” Shea said. “It’s knowing and getting a district attorney to be comfortable with moving forward with the prosecution, with witnesses that sometimes change their story or tell you, ‘This is who did it, but I am not going to court.’ ”