Horror tale of little boy’s fight for life
He heard the mother screaming at the top of her lungs, and then clutched her dying baby boy in his arms.
A close friend of slain 1-yearold Davell Gardner’s family recounted for the first time the harrowing scene outside a Brooklyn park last July after the suspected killer was charged Thursday with a murder that broke the city’s collective heart.
“When I seen her child gasping for the last little bit of air . . .” he told the Daily News, his voice trailing off. “He was fighting for his life the whole ride. I was trying to close the wound in his stomach, trying to put pressure.”
The friend recounted family members’ desperate efforts to save dying Davell Gardner after a stray bullet struck the boy in his stroller during a latenight family cookout on July 12. The man lived in the same Bedford-Stuyvesant building as the doomed baby and his mom, Felicia Gordon.
“It was a terrible night ... and they just came in blasting,” recounted the friend, who rushed outside after the gunshots started. “What I heard, it sounded like a real-life horror movie.”
Once outside, he found everything happening at warp speed: Three other victims were shot and the mother was hysterical as he carried her baby to a waiting car.
“They handed me the child,” he said. “Mind you, this child had a bullet in his stomach. Our (friend), he sped to Interfaith (Medical Center). All these red lights, he sped ... We weren’t waiting for no ambulance. The baby would have died here on this block.”
Once at Interfaith, they were sent to Maimonides Medical Center — a facility better equipped to treat the tiny gunshot victim, he recalled. Little Davell died there about three hours after the shooting.
The family friend said the gruesome images of that night are impossible to shake.
“You see blood coming out of a child?” said the tearful friend, himself the father of a 3-yearold girl. “That s—- broke me up. And you know what else broke me up? We went to the funeral service and my daughter pointed him out. She said, ‘Daddy, that’s Junior.’ It shattered me.”
The friend added that he had nothing to say when it comes to accused killer Dashawn Austin, 25, and his alleged accomplices.
“What can I say?” he asked. “A child was lost. May God be with you when they reach their final verdict. That’s all I can say.”
On the street near the crime scene, a weather-beaten memorial to Davell remains: A sycamore tree adorned with teddy bears, one featuring a tiny picture of the boy, frozen in time. It was too much for the boy’s mother to bear after the killing.
“Long story short, she don’t live on this block anymore,” the friend explained. “Because that tree brings too many memories.”