Beach-save hero cadet, 18, dies
RYAN GINYARD dreamed of graduation and a better life — only to lose his shot at both in a pointless Bronx murder.
The 24-year-old relative of hip-hop legend Rob Base was delivering tickets for his school’s graduation ceremony to a lifelong friend when he was blasted in a local playground, police sources said.
“It went from a handshake to a dead friend,” said Anthony Castillo, who was greeting Ginyard when the bullets started flying at the Mount Hope Playground basketball court.
“It was crazy to be honest,” a sobbing Castillo told the Daily News. “I’m sprinting back in (toward Ginyard), and I feel dread d when I see his body.”
Cops say the fatal bullet was possibly intended for someone else, and Castillo insisted the e would-be graduate of The New York School for Medical and Dental Assistants was a bystander. “He was never involved in any criminal activity,” Castillo told The News on Saturday. “It t was just a chance drive-by in the e park.”
The aspiring dental assistantt was set to graduate this coming g Friday. His parents were insteadd planning a funeral Saturday for the one-time high school basketball star with a big heart and boundless energy.
“He was funny,” his teary mom, Lori Ginyard, told The News. “Everyone loved him. He wasn’t the type of person to be out there fooling around. . . . He was just a fun-loving person.”
Ginyard said she saw her wounded son loaded into an ambulance just 10 minutes after he left their Bronx apartment Wednesday evening to meet with Castillo.
Earlier in the day, the young man — whose father is a first cousin of Rob Base — came home carrying his graduation cap and gown. “Finishing school was always part of the plan,” said Castillo. “He just wanted to make his mama proud.”
The killer remained on the loose, and sources said the gunman’s target and motive in the Wednesday night shooting remained unclear.
Ginyard was struck once in the midsection in the 9:15 p.m. shooting, and died about five hours later on the operating table at St. Barnabas Hospital, police said.
The victim was able to give his version of what happened to cops before his death, the sources said.
Rob Base, best known for the 1988 hit “It Takes Two,” was among the family members keeping a grim vigil at the Bronx hospital into Thursday morning.
According to police, Castillo was affiliated with the Dub City gang and survived a 2011 shooting. But the witness to his friend’s death insisted he was not involvedi l d with ih a gang. And dh he said he wasn’t the target.
While there were several people in the park when the shooting started, no one saw the gunman in the chaos, police sources said. Cops found two 9-mm. casings at the scene.
“The streets are crazy,” said Castillo’s mother. “How do they even get these guns? I can’t believe someone did this to him. He told me just last week how he wanted me to go to his graduation.” A HEROIC West Point cadet who a attempted to save a struggling sw swimmer on a Long Island beach h has died after a four-day battle for h his life.
Thomas Surdyke, 1 18, of Festus, Mo., w would have turned 19 o on the Fourth of July, b but could not be saved a after being on life supp port since the June 24 in incident. He died last Tuesday.
Surdyke (photo inset) was at a b beach in Southampton while on R R&R with a fellow cadet when he and another person, whom he had met that day, were swept out to sea by a rip current, according to a family statement.
The teen noticed his new acquaintance was struggling to swim in the strong tide and attempted to help the person, witnesses told Southampton authorities.
Surdyke swallowed seawater in his rescue effort and nearly drowned before crews plucked him from the water.