Ex-con wanted for Brooklyn killing on bloody Fourth of July 2020 weekend

An ex-con is being sought in a Brooklyn murder that kicked off the unthinkable bloodshed on Fourth of July weekend last year — which ended with nine people dead and 44 shot, police said Friday.

Sanadoni Bennett, 36, is wanted in connection with the July 5, 2020, fatal shooting of Jose Cepeda, 20, cops said.

Cepeda’s mother, Rosemary Negron, told the Daily News on Friday that Bennett and two other men were arguing with her son leading up the gunfire outside their home on Atkins Ave. in East New York.

Negron, 41, said Bennett (photo) had tried to squat in the apartment below theirs for two months, and the night of the murder he showed up with his wife, their son, and his two cousins.

“He brought his son to a crime scene,” Negron said. “He’s 12 years old.”

After arguing with Negron and Cepeda about the empty apartment, the group left and returned. Bennett had a gun in his waistband, the grieving mother said.

“When he came back, he was arguing with my son, and he pulled out the gun,” Negron explained. “I ran to save my other son, I pushed my other son in our car.”

“I told [police] who it was right after it happened,” Negron said. “I was there from the beginning to the end.”

The two other people who accompanied Bennett to the family’s house are still free.

“If two people come with the other person, shouldn’t the other people be accused of the same thing?” Negron asked.

“It was three people who came to my house to kill my son,” she said. “Why am I still seeing them everyday in the store?”

Cepeda left behind a 3-year old son, Orlando, who still doesn’t understand what happened to his father.

“He thinks that Daddy is at the store getting him some juice,” said Negron. “And he keeps asking me why that’s taking so long.”

Friends and family went to Jacob Riis Park, Cepeda’s favorite beach, on the oneyear anniversary of his death.

Bennett has been arrested three times for drugs and served five years in prison on a weapons conviction beginning in 2010, according to court records.

He was released on parole in 2015, state officials said. His parole ended in October 2020, about three months after Cepeda’s murder.

July 5, 2020, considered the most violent day last year, was a turning point and a wakeup call to the NYPD to get a handle on the massive uptick in violence sprouting up across the city.