Great-grandma weeps in pain
Can’t fathom why 4-yr.-old fatally beaten
The great-grandmother of a 4-year-old Brooklyn boy beaten to death in his home last weekend wept Wednesday while calling for an arrest in the brutal killing.
“They’re not telling us anything,” a devastated Dena Emerson told the Daily News through tears. “This is a tragedy. My …[great-grandson] is not unique but he’s my grandson. I never thought it would hit me at home.”
Emerson, 67, was both outraged and grief-stricken by the fatal beating of tiny Aisyn Emerson Gonzalez, a boy with lots of love and support from her side of the family.
A source familiar with the case said the child suffered severe head and rib injuries before police arrived at the boy’s Williamsburg apartment on South Fifth St. near Berry St. on Saturday morning.
The city medical examiner has ruled his death a homicide, finding he was a victim of battered child syndrome.
“I talk to him every day through FaceTime,” recalled Emerson. “He wanted a T-ball bat and he wanted a glove . ... That baby didn’t lack for nothing. That baby was a happy baby. We don’t understand this.”
Emerson bought the baseball mitt, but Aisyn never had a chance to use it.
The family matriarch recalled her shock at the phone call with word of the boy’s hospitalization and said Aisyn’s biological father was “not well at all. He’s in shock. He’s angry.”
The child’s mother’s current boyfriend was in the apartment when police arrived Saturday. He told cops he found Aisyn unconscious about 10 a.m. and contacted the boy’s mother, who was working and instructed him to call for help.
He dialed 911 at 10:14 a.m. and tried to perform CPR until medics arrived, police said. Little Aisyn was rushed to Woodhull Medical Center, where he died that day.
Heartbroken neighbors in the building where the boy was killed said they never saw any signs of the coming horror.
“Every time I hear him, he’s always playing, he’s always laughing,” next-door neighbor Samantha Mitchell recalled Wednesday. “I never seen no bruises on him, nothing like that. It’s mind-boggling . ... And now I’m uncomfortable in my own apartment.”
Milton Rosa, 61, who lives one floor above the boy’s family, recalled him as a happy kid and never saw any problems with his mother. Word of Aisyn’s death left him reeling as the police investigation continued, with no arrests made four days later.
“I cried,” he said. “He didn’t deserve that, but it happened. I cried all day yesterday. I was across the street, just crying.”
An emotional Mitchell, 37, covered her mouth with her hand after seeing a photo of the slain child, recalling how she enjoyed joking around with Aisyn.
“I used to call him my ‘boyfriend,’ ” she said. “For them to say the little boy is dead, it’s crazy. Every time I walk past this house, I feel his spirit.”
The city Administration for Children’s Services confirmed it was investigating the case with police, but declined to say if the agency had previously responded to calls from the apartment.
The child’s fatal beating was one of three similar deaths in the city over the past week.
On Sunday, Jaycee Eubanks, 4, died at the hospital after his older brother told neighbors and authorities that their mother’s boyfriend had assaulted them in the Gowanus Houses in Brooklyn. Jaycee’s cause of death has not yet been determined and there has not been an arrest.
Three days before that, 15-month-old Legacy Beauford was beaten dead, allegedly at the hands of his mother’s boyfriend, inside their Webster Houses apartment in Morrisania, the Bronx. Keishawn Gordon, 23, charged with murder, told police the child had been “irking me” because he wouldn’t stop crying.
There was a fourth victim last month: Julissia Batties, 7, who police suspect was fatally beaten by her teen brother after she was returned to the custody of her mother in their Bronx apartment. No arrest has been made yet in that case.