HS shoot vic: ‘It wasn’t like that before’
The 17-year-old son of an NYPD cop said he was shocked that he was shot outside Maspeth HS in his “safe” Queens neighborhood.
“In Maspeth?” Ryan Mera told The Post on Thursday. “No. It wasn’t like that before. It’s been changing all the time. It has changed.
“Incident after incident lately,” he added. “It’s changing every day that goes by.”
The teen said that his parents now want to move.
“I still feel safe going to the school and it’s about finished,” Mera added. “I’m a junior. But my parents want to move me to a different school for the senior year.”
Moped drive-by
Mera said he was hanging around outside a dim sum restaurant across from the Elmhurst school shortly after 1:40 p.m. Wednesday when the gunman rode by on a scooter and shot him in the arm.
“I was waiting for my girlfriend by the Chinese store,” he said. “Two people on mopeds pulled up. He pulled it out, cocked it back and shot.”
The teen was hit in the arm, suffering non-life-threatening injuries. A 15-year-old student was later arrested and charged with attempted murder, assault, reckless endangerment and criminal possession of a weapon.
The NYPD would not identify the suspect because of his age. The Post is also withholding his name.
Police also said Thursday that Mera was not the intended target but a bystander.
The shooting stemmed from a beef at the school between the teen gunman and another student who was walking with Mera at the time, sources said.
‘Two holes by my elbow’
“It was an electric moped,” Mera told The Post. “I thought my friend was shot and I asked him and he said, ‘No, you were shot.’ I
looked down at my left arm and I had two holes by my elbow.
“My friend took off his shirt and wrapped it and we walked into the school,” he said. “I told them I got shot and I sat on a chair. And the gym teacher was holding my arm, wrapping in the shirt and applying pressure until the ambulance comes.
“They said it was a lucky shot,” he added. “It didn’t hit a bone and went through. I can move my arm. A month or two to recover.”
The incident comes amid a continued spike in gun violence in the Big Apple. Last month, 16year-old Angellyh Yambo was shot and killed by a stray bullet outside University Prep Charter.
Additional reporting by Amanda Woods