24-KARAT KILLERS
MAN EXECUTED, PAL WOUNDED AS JEWEL-ROB CREW BLASTS CAR
The driver of a crashed BMW took a fatal bullet to the head from a cold-blooded bandit on an upper Manhattan street — with the gunman stripping the dying victim of his watch, ring and gold diamond-encrusted chain during the wild caught-on-video robbery.
The killer and his two accomplices, all dressed in black and wearing masks, targeted Milton Grant and his friend, who was shot and robbed before escaping with his life, after spotting them sporting flashy jewelry at a club, investigators believe.
“Why? Just for jewelry?” asked the slain man’s heartbroken dad, Milton Grant Sr. “You destroyed me. He has two young kids. Why? ... Is it worth it, just for jewelry, to put a family through this pain?”
Grant, the 34-year-old father of twin boys, was behind the wheel of the luxury sedan, parked with its hazard lights on, when a gray Honda Accord with the robbers inside stopped across the street about 4:45 a.m. Monday on Dyckman St. near
Vermilyea Ave. in Inwood, cops said.
Grant pulled over to let a second friend go use the bathroom as the trio headed home from a late Father’s Day trip for dinner and a subsequent stop at a Manhattan club, according to relatives of the surviving victim.
The three robbers jumped out of their car, leaving its driver behind the wheel as they charged toward the BMW. One ran immediately up to the driver’s-side window, while his crime partners went after Grant’s childhood friend Randal Chacon, 33, who was standing near the rear of the BMW.
Grant, whose sons are age 3, was driving away from the mayhem when he was shot in the head by one of the crooks with an apparent silencer on his gun. After the BMW crashed into a building, the gunman ran over and climbed inside to steal the dying man’s jewelry, shocking video released by the NYPD Tuesday shows.
Meanwhile, the two other bandits grappled with Chacon, snatching the chain around his neck before shooting him in the groin as he ran for his life, the video shows.
The crooks sped away uptown in the car driven by their getaway driver and remain the targets of an NYPD manhunt.
Grant died at the scene. On Friday he and longtime girlfriend Nixia Jordan took their twins to the Bronx Zoo to kick off Father’s Day weekend.
“He was a family man,” Jordan told the Daily News, speaking through tears. “He loved his kids so much. And we just celebrated him.”
Chacon, a Brooklyn resident and father of an 11-year-old daughter, was recovering in the intensive care unit Tuesday at Harlem Hospital. He will need surgery to remove the bullet still lodged in his pelvis.
“They shouldn’t see the light of day ever again,” his mother, Carmen Pula, 57, said of the attackers. “I just saw the video and I said, ‘I don’t know, thank God he’s alive.’ That he’s alive is a miracle.”
Pula said her shaken son remembers little about what happened.
“He didn’t know his friend had died,” she said. “He asked me for his friend and I said ‘I don’t know,’ because I didn’t want to say to him. But now, a lot of people tell him that he died. He was crying.”
According to Grant Sr., his slain son — who like his dad worked construction — owned a pricey watch along with a gold and diamond chain, worth about $2,500, purchased while living at the dad’s home in Rosedale, Queens. The son more recently moved in with his girlfriend to raise the twins.
“Before the kids he lived with me, so he didn’t pay rent and he saved his money and bought nice things,” the heartbroken father explained. “He liked nice things.”
After moving out, Grant was a frequent visitor to his father’s home, celebrating Father’s Day together just hours before the shooting.
“We just had a great Father’s Day,” Grant said. “He had brought over my grandkids and a ton of lobster and seafood for everyone to eat.”
The next morning while at work Grant got frantic phone calls from his son’s girlfriend and police.
“We had a great evening and when they told me Monday morning I couldn’t believe it,” the dad said. “I thought they was kidding. I ask myself, ‘Why?’ ”
“He’s my only kid and this is really hard,” he added. “My son’s body is at the morgue right now.”
The devastated Jordan had a message for the cold-hearted attackers who left her kids without a father. “I hope justice finds you,” she said. “And I’m not going to wish any ill will on you or your family — even though you’ve taken something so precious away from me.”