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A young Brooklyn man who became a Marine to be just like his dad was mortally wounded trying to save a comrade during a bloody clash in Afghanistan last week, grieving kin and the military said yesterday.
“The last thing I told him when he came home for Thanksgiving was, ‘Be safe, Jabari. I want you to come back home alive.’ And he smiled — he had a lovely smile,” recalled Njaye Shinhoster, 57, the shattered stepmom of slain Lance Cpl. Jabari Thompson, 22.
“He said he loved us and that he’d be back,” she said.
But Thompson, a machine-gunner, never recovered from the horrific wounds he sustained in combat July 13 in Afghanistan’s Helmand province, succumbing at a military hospital in Germany on Sunday.
“We were told that he was trying to help a friend who got shot,” said Thompson’s aunt, Novlette Hanson, 48.
But in his heroic rush to his friend’s aid, he stepped on a landmine and “was injured very badly. He lost both his legs,” Hanson said.
“I was always so worried about him, but he would tell me not to worry. He said, ‘Auntie, it’s OK. I’ll be back,’ ” she said.
“I got a letter from him last week. He told me he was supposed to be back here the week of August 1,” she added.
Jabari’s dad, Gregory, his big sister, Chekesha Thompson, 28, and his fiancée, Shemiah Louis, took a heartbreaking flight to Germany to be at his bedside when he died.
“I just told him that I loved him and that I wanted him to try to make it because I knew he had a strong heart,” said Chekesha.
“He had gone through so much,” she said sadly, noting that their beloved mother had died more than 10 years ago.
Jabari had always wanted to become a Marine because his father had been one, his family said.
“He wanted to follow in his dad’s footsteps,” Shinhoster said.
As a kid, he had moved to Brownsville, Brooklyn, from Florida — where his father still lives — after his mom passed away. He wanted to be with her family and go to school in the city.
“The City of New York did so much for him,” Chekesha said of Jabari, who graduated from South Shore HS in Canarsie.
She said the family may bring him back to New York one final time — for burial at Pinelawn Cemetery on Long Island, where his mother was laid to rest. But she said the family hasn’t decided.
Jabari’s dad hopes to bury him in Fort Lauderdale, Shinhoster said. “His dad wants him here so he can go to his gravesite and talk to him,” she said. “He was so proud of him.”
In tribute to the fallen soldier, Gov. Cuomo ordered flags on state buildings to be flown at half-staff this Friday.
Jabari’s aunt, Hanson, said she has plans to honor her beloved nephew in another way.
“He kept a special picture album. I remember he said, ‘Auntie, please take care of my album. My whole life is in that book. Please protect it for me,’ ” she said. “And that’s what I’m going to do.”