‘CARING & LOVELY’:
Mariama Dampha with her husband, Lamin Sillah, a Bronx gas-station worker who had been sending her money back home in Gambia until he was shot dead Tuesday in a stickup caught on camera (above).
‘CARING & LOVELY’: Mariama Dampha with her husband, Lamin Sillah, a Bronx gasstation worker who had been sending her money back home in Gambia until he was shot dead Tuesday in a stickup caught on camera. (
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‘CARING & LOVELY’: Mariama Dampha with her husband, Lamin Sillah, a Bronx gasstation worker who had been sending her money back home in Gambia until he was shot dead Tuesday in a stickup caught on camera (below). (
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The African immigrant shot dead during a Bronx gas-station stickup had grown so afraid of the violent thugs terrorizing the city that he was planning to bail out and move to Seattle, his cousin said yesterday.
“Lately, he would bring home the papers and show me all the stories with violence,” said a grieving Muhammed Kijera, 24, who shared a bedroom with the victim, Gambian native Lamin Sillah.
“He knew [when he emigrated] there was danger in New York, but he didn’t know it was so common,” Kijera told The Post.
The constant crime made them rethink their plans to work in New York and instead decide to attend a school in Seattle.
“We applied and were accepted, but we didn’t go, yet,” he said. “I think now I go alone. It is too dangerous here.”
Sillah, 28, was shot three times in the torso by a hoodie-wearing fiend at about 9:45 p.m. Tuesday at RC Petroleum in East Tremont. The savage murder was captured on surveillance video released by the NYPD.
The bike-riding killer and his accomplice took off with about $200 and were still at large last night.
Sillah’s wife, Mariama Dampha, lashed out yesterday at the thug who took away the love of her life.
“I would like justice to be held for him. Let them make all effort to catch the killer because we really lost an innocent soul,” she told The Post through tears from her home in Kuntaur, Gambia, a rural town of 2,000.
But Dampha, a devout Muslim like her husband was, said Sillah’s senseless death was God’s will.
“Whatever God does, nobody can do anything about that,” Dampha, 21.
“It is really a painful moment for me. He is very dear to me. He is so caring and lovely.”
Sillah had been working the 2-to-10 p.m. shift for just two weeks — sending his pay home to support his extended family in Gambia — while he went to school for an accounting degree by day.
Dampha, a student who married Sillah last November, said her husband “was helping his mother, dad, sisters and brother, all of them. He would help them financially. If they ever had problem, he would help them.”
For now, she’s trying to hang on until his body is returned to Gambia for burial.
“My parents and family are supporting me morally. Everyone is just shocked. I cannot believe this, but there is nothing we can do. Only God knows,” she said.
Kijera said he had a heartbreaking conversation with Sillah’s mother, whom the family calls “Mama Sawo,” when he called to break the news.
“When I called Gambia to tell his parents, his mother was crying and asking, ‘Why did they kill him? Why did they kill my son?’ ” he said.
“I tried to explain that it was a robbery, that they just wanted the money. She didn’t understand at first, and then she asked, ‘So he did not do anything to them?’ And I said, ‘No, it was just for money.’ They cold not understand that,” he recalled.
“I had to explain that these people have no sympathy. The man who killed him has no feeling, no understanding of the importance of life.”
Also yesterday, friends who knew Sillah when he worked in accounting at the Kotu Senior Elementary School in Gambia reacted to the shooting on the school’s Facebook page.
“May his gentle soul rest in peace, I cannot believe dat Sillah has gone, may Allah reward him janatul firdaws,” posted pal Yaya Danso, referring to what Muslims believe is the highest level of paradise.
A wake for Sillah will be held at 9:30 a.m Saturday at the First Avenue Funeral Home in Manhattan at 2242 First Ave. between 115th and 116th streets.
“We will pray for Lamin, and then his body will be sent back to Gambia for the funeral,” said his uncle Alhagie Ebou Cham, who is Kijera’s father and also lived with Sillah a few blocks from the gas station.
A $12,000 reward is being offered for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the gunmen.
Additional reporting by Arao Ameny