Man shot to death on Brooklyn street

A young man’s dreams of a new home with his pregnant fiancée and their unborn child disappeared in a hail of bullets early Saturday outside a Brooklyn apartment building.

Cops arrived at the Whitman Houses opposite Fort Greene Park around 12:30 a.m. to find 24-year-old Devonte Cordero sprawled on the ground with multiple gunshots to his torso. His family members learned of the tragedy from a close friend who knocked on their door around 3 a.m., the slain man’s distraught sister told the Daily News.

“The worst knock you ever want to get,” said the older sister, gathered with weeping relatives inside their apartment. “So it’s like I just stopped breathing automatically and all we can do is get to Brooklyn Hospital. We didn’t get to say our farewells ... They already pronounced him dead.”

The sister claimed her brother was lured to his death at a house party near the city public housing building before the shooter opened fire into Cordero’s back, pumping five bullets into the helpless victim.

“Five times in the back?” she asked. “That’s malice, that’s hate. It’s an intent. It’s jealousy.”

A barrage of gunshots followed by blaring police sirens in the middle of the night awoke building residents. No arrests were made, and cops were searching the area for surveillance video.

“I heard maybe around 6 to 7 shots,” said one neighbor who declined to share his name. “I was sleeping already and it woke me up.”

The sister said Cordero recently bought a car and planned a move to New Jersey with his nine-months-pregnant bride-to-be. The couple was expecting a baby girl that Cordero intended to name after a cousin gunned down in 2005 during a pre-Father’s Day barbecue at a Crown Heights playground

Cordero “was truly, truly loved,” said the sister. “He was the life of the family, life of the party. He had a heart of gold, and he just wanted to make sure everybody was happy.”

The murder victim was one of six kids, and played point guard for the George Westinghouse High School hoops team until a fractured wrist cut his career short. He recently lost a job with Verizon due to a coronavirus-related layoff, the sister said, but was looking forward to a better future with his new child in their new home.

“He was just on that path, that journey to be a better person,” his sister continued. “And his life was just cut short do to gun violence ... That’s the story. That’s how you sum up the story.”

The family was left to make plans for a funeral, and the sister encouraged the shooter to surrender even as she grieved.

“He will always be my baby and I will always love him,” said his sister. “And he will never go unforgotten. I promise.”

Security video released Saturday shows a gunman firing at a teenager and wounding him in Queens on Jan. 1, then running off with an accomplice (right). They are still being sought.