SLAIN TEEN WANTED OUT
At 13, he’d already had enough of the Crips lifestyle
The 13-year-old gangbanger who was fatally shot amid a raging Bronx street war wanted to leave the Crips and “get out of the hood” in the days before he was killed, griefstricken pals told The Post on Tuesday.
“Two weeks ago we was with him, and he was telling us how he was tired of this gang stuff. He wanted to get some money and get out of the hood,” said a 16-year-old female friend of Jaryan Elliot, the Crips tough who was fatally shot Sunday in apparent revenge for a gang slaying four days earlier.
Jaryan’s pal lamented gangs are so revered in the area that her little brother boasts he’s in one, even though he is not.
“He is only 10 years old. He is saying that he is in a gang,’’ she said. “He thinks it’s cute, but I tell him he is not in no gang. He is only 10 years old.”
Jaryan was one of three teens killed in The Bronx within five days over the past week during what a law-enforcement source told The Post was a “major gang war.”
Jaryan’s former girlfriend said she tried to warn him about being in a gang, acknowledging that he “was a Crip.”
“I just be telling him, ‘You in a gang, you don’t know who is in the car with you, you don’t know if they’d run up on you, you don’t know what they have,’ ” the 14-year-old said. “They are over here wearing ski masks, you can’t see nobody’s face.”
But “it’s hard to get out of the gang. You gotta get beat up to get out,” she added.
“I don’t know why they did this because he was so young,’’ she continued, referring to Jaryan’s broad-daylight slaying.
“He was the youngest of all of them. July 29th, he would be 14.”
The teen said Jaryan — who had been arrested eight times, including for robbery and assault, and had only just graduated from middle school — had spent time at a juvenile-detention center and seemed to be on a better path afterward.
“Ever since he out, he’s been doing good, doing his schoolwork,’’ she said, still speaking about the doomed 13-year-old in the present tense.
Law-enforcement sources have told The Post that Jaryan was murdered in revenge for the gang-related killing of 19-year-old Tyquill Daugherty last Wednesday in Crotona in The Bronx. Jaryan is believed to have been at the scene at the time Daugherty was killed, although Jaryan was not the triggerman.
His ex-girlfriend said she was told Jaryan was headed to fix a moped with a male pal when he was gunned down.
She said she rushed to the hospital when she heard he had been shot, joining his mom, friends and other gang members.
“[His mother] couldn’t walk . . . When they pronounced him dead, she came out screaming and crying,’’ the girl said.
The 16-year-old pal recalled Jaryan being a friendly face when she first moved to the neighborhood.
“He was overprotective of his friends. He’d text people and ask if we are good, ‘How did you sleep, did you eat?’ He was a beautiful soul. He cared about people,’’ she said.
“It hurts me that this is his first teen year. He had a long life to live,’’ the heartbroken friend said.
“He didn’t get to live it. He didn’t even make it to high school.
“A gang changes your life forever,” she said. Jaryan’s ex-girlfriend said she now warns others “to stay out of these streets.”
“These streets don’t love nobody nowadays,” she said. “I stay in. I used to go out more, but I only go out once in a while now.”
The third teen killed in the recent gang violence was Ramon Gil-Medrano, a 16year-old affiliated with the 800 YGz, or Young Gunnaz, gang, according to cops and other sources. He was fatally shot about 8½ hours after Jaryan’s slaying — in retaliation for the 13-year-old’s death, sources have said.
Gil-Medrano was at the scene when Jaryan died, although it is not clear whether Ramon shot him, according to sources.
Meanwhile, more gang-related violence was reported on Monday — involving a 66-year-old woman who was the innocent victim of a shooting, as well as a 17-year-old boy who took a bullet to the stomach the same day.