A 15-year-old boy gunned down just steps away from his home in Harlem cried out desperately in fear as he lay dying on the sidewalk, “Please! Please, I don’t want to die!”
The sad moment was recounted by a family friend of Jihad Pack, who desperately tried to stop the youth’s bleeding as he lay pleading for his life.
Pack was shot one door down from the building where he lived in NYCHA’s Martin Luther King Jr. Towers around 6:20 p.m. Wednesday, cops said.
The mortally wounded teen staggered to the walkway outside his building on W. 115th St. near Malcolm X Blvd., where the family friend found him bleeding out on the pavement, his life ebbing away.
“I took off my shirt to put pressure on the wound. He was saying, ‘Please! Please, I don’t want to die!’” said the friend, 28, who gave her name as Kadisha. “I was the last person he spoke to. His last words were, ‘Kadisha, I don’t want to die.’”
Officers responding to the shooting apprehended another 15-year-old boy after a foot pursuit. He was charged Thursday with murder, attempted murder and criminal possession of a weapon for the shooting.
The teen shooter’s name was not released because of his age.
“They caught the shooter and we’re glad,” said Jihad’s aunt, who asked that her name be withheld.
A 57-year-old man was also wounded in the shooting. Police believe Jihad was the intended target.
Kerry Burke / New York Daily News
Police investigate after 15-year-old Jihad Pack was fatally shot inside NYCHA’s Martin Luther King Jr. Towers on Wednesday. (Kerry Burke / New York Daily News)
“The ambulance went to the guy shot in the hand,” Kadisha said. “I ran over and said, ‘No. He’s going to be fine. There’s a little boy over there who has been shot!’”
Medics rushed both victims to Mt. Sinai Morningside, where Jihad died.
Another relative of Jihad’s said the teen had engaged in an online feud before he was killed, although cops could not immediately confirm if that was the motive for the slaying.
“It was a beef on the Internet,” the relative said. “They were going back and forth and they’re still trashing him now.”
“He was no gang member,” the relative said of Jihad. “He was a good boy.”
The two victims were both under the scaffolding but a few feet away from each other. The gunman was firing from east to west under the construction scaffolding, which stretches the length of three apartment buildings.
Cops were alerted to the shooting by ShotSpotter, a system of highly sensitive microphones positioned in the area designed to detect gunfire. When they arrived, they found the two gunshot victims.
The older victim was relaxing outside, smoking a cigar, when he was shot, his father, Clarence Gaines, told The News.
“I’m grateful they didn’t get my son in the body,” Gaines said. “It’s terribly sad about that little boy. He never got a chance to live his life.”