Family stunned man was killed in Queens dice-game shootout

AQueensmanrolledthediceandgotfatallyshot in the back — leaving his family mystified.

Paul Valiant, 31, was killed last weekend over a game of dice on 134th St. and Rockaway Blvd. in South Ozone Park. When his baffled family heard the awful news, they were stunned — Valiant was no gambler and never threw bones, they said.

“He does not play dice. He doesn’t even play cards,” Valiant’s grandmother Eurica McKenzie, 84, told the Daily News. “We have no idea [what happened].”

Witnesses told police that Valiant was playing with a group of other men on the corner about 1:30 a.m. when he got into an argument.

Investigators say video shows Valiant and his killer pull guns and start shooting. Valiant lost the shootout and was blasted in the back several times as he tried to run away.

His family was also puzzled why he was on that corner — Valiant’s stomping grounds were near 134th Ave., not 134th St., they said.

“He was just Paul,” said his mother, Joy Beckford, 65. “He tried to keep everybody over there safe, that’s why it’s so devastating that he come all the way over on the other side [to 134th St.] and got shot.”

Valiant was born in Queens but mostly grew up in Florida with his mother.

He was one of the best wide receivers at Osceola High School in Kissimmee, Fla., his mom said proudly.

He still loved football, but took an interest in basketball, dance and rap, and was planning to start a hoops league for local youngsters, she said.

He also modeled, and rapped under the stage name “Paul 6.”

“He did a lot of stuff in those 31 years. He lived a full life,” Beckford said.

He moved back to Queens after high school. He worked as a cook at the Delta Sky Club restaurant where he met his girlfriend. He’d recently been out of work, family said.

“He used to bring us mad Nutella, sushi, everything. That chocolate was good,” his niece Zenaijah Phillips, 21, remembered.

Her eyes wet with tears and heavy with fatigue, his girlfriend, Crystal Garris, 30, recounted what she’d miss most.

“Everything. His hugs, his kisses, sleeping next to him,” she sighed. “I miss my friend. My best friend ... his smile, his laughter, he’s so playful.”

The two dated for more than five years, she said.

Phillips, his niece, said she’d miss Valiant’s rap freestyles.

She laughed about how he loved Martinelli’s apple juice, and sandwiches with honey turkey, egg and cheese on a roll.

“It’s senseless. They need to do something to get the guns off the street,” his mother and grandmother pleaded.