Dario Piava (Seth Gottfried)
A pack of gangbangers slit the throat of a pre-law student trying to protect his kid brother from the wilding thugs on a Queens subway platform, cops said yesterday.
Dario Paiva, 27, raced to the aid of his 19-year-old brother Friday night after a frantic call from their mother saying the teen was being attacked by a group of men near the 85th Street-Forest Parkway J-train stop.
His bravery proved no match for the foursome, who pulled knives and rushed at them. Dario died shortly after the 11 p.m. attack.
The suspects remain at large.
“My brother is very protective of me,” Khristian Paiva told The Post. “He was worried that if they saw me again they would attack me.”
The tragic events began as Khristian was walking home that evening while on the phone with his mother.
He ran into the thugs on the street, where they were fighting with a woman, and they began barking threats his way.
One of the knife-wielding men allegedly proclaimed: “I’m mad. I’m going to do something. I don’t give a f–k.”
The mom overheard and frantically called Dario — a Kingsborough Community College student — who ran to the scene.
The thugs had fled onto the elevated-train platform but Dario insisted on giving chase, Khristian said.
During the confrontation, Dario pushed Khristian out of the way as the assailants lunged toward them.
“My brother was pushing me, and he got stabbed,” a weeping Khristian said.
Dario stumbled down to the street before collapsing. The mortally wounded man started seizing and “foaming at the mouth,” his devastated brother said.
“I called emergency services. The lady told he me how to do CPR but he died. He died in my arms.”
Dario was pronounced dead on arrival at Jamaica Hospital.
The brothers were so close, Dario was planning to transfer to Queens College, which Khristian attends, so the two could spend more time together.
Their mother, Norma Paiva, was too distraught to speak yesterday.
“The only thing I could do was scream,” Khristian said. “I just kept screaming for someone to help me.”
Another of Paivi’s brothers, David Poggi, mourned the loss on Facebook.
“I will never hear my beloved brother laugh again,” Poggi wrote. “I hope they find the bastard so I can take what he took from me.”