NEW DAD IS SHOT & KILLED
At least 3 other slays add to surge for year
A week after Shaiquan Wilson turned 21 and welcomed an infant daughter, family members are making plans for his funeral.
Wilson was gunned down near a Bronx deli on his way to the baby’s mother’s home Friday night — one of four murders in a 12-hour span in the city, according to police and the dead man’s family.
The victim’s newborn girl, named Legacy, arrived a day before her father’s final birthday last Monday.
“That was like a birthday gift to him,” said the dead man’s mother, Cheryl Wilson.
Wilson had stopped by the deli to get juice, then apparently paused to watch a dice game on Randall Ave. in Soundview when a masked gunman fired the fatal bullet around 10:40 p.m., cops said.
Family members said it appeared Wilson was killed in a case of mistaken identity on the eve of his daughter’s baby shower.
“I lost my baby,” Cheryl Wilson told the Daily News. “My son loved me, and I loved him. We were very tight.”
His sister, fighting back tears, said her brother took a bullet meant for somebody else. The suspect fled the scene and remained on the loose, cops said.
Wilson “got killed, but it wasn’t meant for him,” the sister said. “He wasn’t even 21 for a week. He had a baby [last] Sunday, and his birthday was Monday. I don’t know what more I can say.”
Cheryl Wilson said she rushed to Jacobi Medical Center, only to find her son was already dead. “I can’t even think right now,” she said.
The last victim among the doomed quartet was a 35year-old man shot in the chest outside his Far Rockaway, Queens, apartment around 6:30 a.m. Saturday. Cops responding to the Dix Ave. building found the victim sprawled outside his firstfloor apartment.
Medics rushed the unidentified victim to St. John’s Episcopal Hospital, where he died a short time later.
The first victim of the night, 48-year-old Telmo Ruiz, was stabbed to death at 6 p.m. Friday during a Washington Heights argument with a knife-wielding man, cops said.
And cops said Forest Byrd, 34, of the Bronx, was shot to death inside a playground at the Eastchester Gardens public housing complex around 1:30 a.m. Saturday.
No arrests have been made in any of the homicides.
As of July 26, cops have seen a 29% jump in murders across the five boroughs, from 176 this time last year to 227, officials said. The NYPD has also seen a 73% jump in shootings, from 431 to 745, officials said.
The numbers meant little to mom Cheryl Wilson. Asked whether little Legacy’s name had a specific meaning, the new grandmother offered a sad reply.
“I guess it does now,” she said.