Akeal
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The grieving mother of a 15-year-old student who was shot in the head and died last week told The Post police should stop and frisk every person on the streets in order to stem increasing gun violence.
“My son is gone because of an illegal gun on the street,” said Natasha Christopher, whose eldest son, Akeal, died on his birthday.
“If they had frisked the person who killed my son, it would have been one less gun on the streets. I’m for it,” she declared.
Akeal’s wake is today at 3 p.m. at Caribe Funeral Home on Utica Avenue. His funeral is tomorrow at Wayside Baptist Church on Broadway in Bushwick.
“He is my angel,” Christopher said.
“We have to try something. There are too many shootings, too many stray bullets, too many young people being shot. I hate to watch the news.”
The epidemic of violence sweeping New York is real, said Christopher, 37, and no one knows its pain more than she does.
She got the call every mother dreads in the middle of the night.
“Tasha, wake up!” the boy’s frantic grandmother told her. “Akeal is in the emergency room.”
He was shot June 27 — and was dead on July 10.
“That was the worst day in my life,” Christopher said. “To watch my son die? It hurts like hell. I asked God to take my life and save his.
“I’m going to miss him every day of my life. I feel like I’m in a dream that has no end. Every time I see my son’s face, I see the smile on his face. He was a happy kid, a good kid. I’m hurt. I’m sad. Every day, I cry. I barely eat. I get no sleep.
“I’m wondering what could make someone do this to my son.”
She insists she did everything she could to shield Akeal from violence.
On days when Akeal, a 10th-grader at Transit Tech HS in East New York, went to school, he had a 5 p.m. curfew.
But Akeal was spending the summer with his dad, and the rules were not as strict. He was shot after a graduation party in Bushwick after thugs confronted him because they thought he was in a local gang.
“I tried my best to keep him off the streets,” Christopher said. “I knew the streets had nothing good for him. I always told him ‘There is nothing out there for you.’ ”
She’s yet to even touch his room.
“It’s hard to go in there, even to be in the house. It’s like he is everywhere. My life is never going to be the same again,” she said.
Christopher is angry that there have been no arrests — and, she claims, little cooperation.
“I know people are scared, but this could be their child. If you see something, say something. For people not to say anything — there is something wrong with this world,” she said.
She has two more sons, 11 and 5. She swears the streets won’t get them, too.