Metro

Hero mom shot down in Brooklyn left 12 kids behind

The selfless mother of 13 gunned down trying to shield a group of children from a gangbanger’s bullets joins her two brothers as murder victims on the blood-soaked streets of central Brooklyn, her relatives told The Post yesterday.

Zurana Horton, 34, who was killed moments after she picked up her 11-year-old daughter, Alexis, from PS/IS 298 in Brownsville in a shooting that wounded two other innocents, has an ill-fated family history that goes back 20 years.

Her death caps an unthinkable triple tragedy for Horton’s mom, Denise Peace, one of whose sons was shot dead in a 1991 robbery and another slain last year.

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“All three children died from gunfire,” Peace, a 54-year-old health-care worker, told The Post, begging Mayor Bloomberg: “Please help me find the people who killed my children!”

Horton’s death leaves her children — who range in age from 1 1/2 to 18 — without a mother.

Peace said she will care for seven of the youngsters, while Oniel Vaughan, 42, will have custody of five of his children with Horton.

“They miss their mom,” Vaughan told The Post. “Their mother always cared for them. I want them to remember her as a good woman, as a good mother trying to save people.”

Devastated 15-year-old daughter Jenisha told The Post she saw her mother’s body on the sidewalk — but had no idea it was her as the teen walked past the grisly crime scene.

“I was wondering where my mother was,” Jenisha said. “I found out later [the body] was my mother. My little sister [Alexis] said, ‘Mommy died. She got shot.’

“Now sometimes she’s talking, sometimes she’s not. I’m trying to be strong, keep my head up. That how my mom taught me.”

Horton’s 16-year-old son, Tyquran, said he and his mom “were like best friends. I like to play with my mom — we would play Monopoly and Wii.”

Neighbors believed Horton was pregnant again at the time of her death, but the Medical Examiner’s Office said that was not the case.

Family members said Horton had been planning to get remarried soon and leave the violent neighborhood.

“Now she can’t do any of that,” a cousin said.

Police had no suspects in custody as of late yesterday — but sources said cops believe the gunplay began as a street fight between rival members of the Hoodstars and the Wave gangs.

As a group of seven to 10 thugs fought on the street, one gangbanger broke off and took a perch on the roof of 1800 Pitkin Ave.

From there, he fired seven to 10 shots into the crowd below. But rather than hit his mark, he fatally struck Horton and wounded another mother and 11-year-old Cheanne McKnight.

City Councilman Charles Barron railed at the senseless violence.

“The blood of the innocents have been spilled too often out here,” he told The Post.

Barron said he’ll call on both Bloomberg and Gov. Cuomo to respond “to a state of emergency here” by stopping the flow of guns into the neighborhood and building more programs and facilities for youth “to get them off the corner.”

“This is total madness, and it must stop.” Barron said.

Years of gunplay have had a tragic impact on Horton’s family.

“I’m so mad that I get numb,” Peace said. “I don’t know how I feel. I have to be strong for my grandchildren. I have not broken down yet.”

The sorrows began in January 1991, when Peace’s 16-year-old son, Quan, was gunned down in Bushwick while being robbed over a $169 “8-ball” jacket his mom had given him for Christmas.

“I came out of the house and my baby was lying there,” his shattered mom told The Post at the time.

The gaudy jacket, with a figure “8” emblazoned on the back — part of a short-lived but deadly fashion craze — was left bloodied at the scene.

In June 1992, Peace’s other boy, 13-year-old Zacquran, was nearly killed when he was beaten to a pulp and tossed on the subway tracks at the Chauncey Street station in Bushwick.

At the time, sources told The Post the teen was scheduled to testify in an armed-robbery case later that month.

Zacquran survived, but he couldn’t escape the neighborhood’s violence. Eighteen years later, at the age of 31, he was shot dead in the back in Bushwick.

Cops said he was the intended target of the shooting.

Zurana, the slain mom, was unique in a neighborhood rife with guns and killing. She never ditched her kids to party like a lot of women her age, neighbors said.

“A lot of people would rather party than stay home when their kids are little,” said Concheta Artis, who lived in the same building as Horton.

“But I never saw anyone else baby-sitting her children or picking them up from school. She did that herself. And that’s rare, especially where I live.”

Horton lost a 9-year-old daughter, Quranisha, to pneumonia, in 2007.

Up 154%

shooting victims, week of Oct. 10-16, 2011

Down 19%

arrests made by Organized Crime Control Bureau*

*through Oct. 16

Additional reporting by Kevin Sheehan and Erin Calabrese