Sis’ sorrow for man shot by police in B’klyn

THE TEARS began streaming down her face as Telah Vassell spoke fondly of her slain brother.

“He’s always been my protector,” she told hundreds of mourners filling a Brooklyn church Friday for the funeral of her sibling Saheed.“No matter what, Saheed always ended his conversations with ‘I love you.’”

Vassell was recalled as a man of many talents and an abiding love for one and all during a lengthy service that belied the oftviewed video of his confrontational last stand on a Crown Heights sidewalk.

He was shot by four NYPD officers after pointing what looked like a handgun at the cops on April 4.

Family friend Howard Thompson, who traveled to Brooklyn from his native Jamaica, recalled seeing little Vassell tagging along with his dad to Sunday services.

“He was always trying to make you feel good in his presence,” Thompson said. “There is no child in this church who would be scared to see that man.”

A photo of a bright-eyed Vassell as a young boy sat to the left of a coffin adorned with cream and blue roses.

A second picture on the right was more recent, after Vassell was diagnosed as bipolar. His son Tyshawn, 15, wore a black hoodie bearing his father’s picture.

Vassell, 34, was shot to death after the officers responded to a report of a man pointing a gun at random pedestrians in the neighborhood.

Security video showed Vassell waving what was actually a silver cylindrical piece of soldering iron as he approached various people with his arm extended.

Before the service began, Vassell’s parents released a statement demanding the firing of the four officers who shot and killed Saheed.