From hero kid to NYC gun vic

Tried to halt '11 cart toss

A 25-year-old man shot to death on a Bronx street Sunday was once hailed a hero in the case of a Manhattan mother critically injured when pranksters tossed a mall shopping cart on her from a parking garage.

Achilles Baskin was 14 when he futilely tried to stop two young pals from pushing the cart over the ledge of a fourth-floor walkway at the East Harlem Plaza in 2011. Philanthropist mom-of-two Marion Hedges was struck by the falling cart and left near death.

Over the next decade, Baskin (inset), who reported his no-good buddies to the cops, couldn’t seem to shake the demons that followed his bravery, racking up a string of arrests in recent years before being shot dead in a possibly drug-fueled dispute.

“It’s very sad because he was my little hero,’’ Hedges told The Post on Monday.

She said Baskin, who was publicly praised for his “courage’’ by thenMayor Michael Bloomberg after the horror, “really tried to do the right thing” as a youngster.

“He really was brave,’’ she said. “I don’t know what choices he made [later], but it’s tough.

“Either he was in the wrong place at the wrong time or made the wrong choice at the wrong time’’ Sunday, Hedges said.

“But I wish his life had been different because who knows what he would have accomplished.

“Unfortunately, now we’ll never know what would have been his life because it was cut short.’’

Hedges was a 47-yearold real-estate broker when she was critically injured while shopping for Halloween candy for the needy with her son, then 13.

Video obtained by The Post in 2012 shows Baskin trying to frantically stop his friends, ages 12 and 13, from pushing the cart off the 70-foot ledge, as Hedges and her son stood below.

Hedges suffered brain damage, broken ribs and a broken collarbone in the attack. She was forced to relearn to walk and read, and she still walks with a cane and suffers from double vision.

The two boys who pushed off the cart — Raymond Hernandez, then 12, and Jeovanni Rosario, then 13 — ended up pleading guilty to assault.

Rosario landed six to 18 months in a juvenile facility in Westchester County, while Hernandez was sentenced to six to 16 months in a group home.

Hedges said that sadly, she never met Baskin because she was fighting her own battle to live.

“I wish I had gotten to know him,’’ said Hedges, who still volunteers and won an award from New York’s Junior League for her work this month.

“I don’t think he really had a shot,” she said.

“But he was definitely a hero . . . He was very brave, trying to stop bad things from happening.”