Metro

16 year-old arrested for gang hit

All this because some punk wanted a little street cred.

It was a baby-faced gunman “looking to make his bones” with a vicious South Bronx street gang who accidentally shot an innocent 15-year-old schoolgirl in the head while taking aim at a thug the criminal pack had targeted, police said yesterday.

Carvett Gentles, 16, and four others were charged with attempted murder for shooting Vada Vasquez as she walked home from school Monday in Crotona as the Bloods-connected gang — who call themselves the Gorilla Bloods — chased down another man they were trying to kill in revenge for a Rikers Island prison fight.

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Gentles — who has never been arrested before and was called “Young’un” by the crew — was handed the gun by one of his co-defendants so he could shoot the intended target, Tyrone Creighton, 19, authorities said.

Creighton — who is out on bail in an attempted-murder case — has two brothers in Rikers, Dior and Kenneth, who a month ago brutally beat a man connected to the gang, Darrell Joe, 22, sparking a hunt for retaliation.

“What’s with the beef between your brothers and Darrell?” Creighton was asked by one of the Gorillas as he walked out of a bodega at Home Street and Prospect Avenue. When he spotted the gun, he shoved one of the others into the killer wannabe and took off.

Gentles blasted eight shots in Creighton’s direction — striking him twice, but also hitting Vasquez in the head. She remains in critical but stable condition in a medically induced coma, officials said.

“It’s senseless,” said Vasquez’s sister Mandy Boodram. “These boys, they don’t fight with their fists anymore — all they know how to do is pull out some heat and hit bystanders.”

She added, “It’s very hard to stomach knowing that it is a person of that young age. My sister is only 15 — he’s just one year older. It’s shocking to know.

“But we’re not thinking about him, we’re thinking about Vada. We just want her to wake up. That’s all we care about.”

Gentles’ mother, Zelita Mighty, 36, said she “could not breathe” when asked about the charges, and later handed reporters a handwritten note expressing her condolences about the wounded girl.

“The events over the past couple of days have been tragic. We are heartbroken over the whole incident. We pray daily for young Vada Vasquez,” the shattered woman scrawled on a torn piece of notebook paper.

Neighbors said Gentles had been a good kid — living with his mother and stepfather and going to Frederick Douglass Academy. But recently, he fell in with the local gang — several members are relatives — which terrorizes the neighborhood.

“He had ambition,” said one neighbor, who declined to give his name. “He wanted to become a professional basketball player. His friends, though, they were not good people.”

A former classmate said Gentles was known as “Zeko” on the court and as “the class clown” in school, but had “fallen in with the wrong crowd” lately.

“I can’t believe he’d do all this. He’s ruined his life,” said 15-year-old Deirdre Husband

The four others arrested — brothers Cleve and Clivie “Mo-Mo” Smith, ages 20 and 19, Rohan Francis, 18, and Dwayne Taylor, 23 — have lengthy rap sheets with numerous arrests for drug dealing, beating women, gun possession and even for firing a gun at police, records show.

In July, Clivie Smith was arrested for beating Mighty — who is his cousin — in front of her home and then pulling out a pistol and declaring, “I’ll make one phone call and all this will be smashed up,” according the police report.

“My sons did not do this,” said the Smiths’ mom, Scylestina Smith, at Bronx Criminal Court. “My babies didn’t do that.”

Gentles kept quiet when led out of the 42nd Precinct yesterday, but the others were screaming over each other to proclaim their innocence.

“I ain’t do s – – t. We’re innocent. They’re setting us all up,” said Cleve Smith.

“Where’s my mother at?” yelled another.

“I swear to God they are setting us all up,” yelled a third.

Despite its name, the gang is not officially part of the Bloods gang, a notorious national crime syndicate, but rather an affiliate, officials said. Until recently, they had been known as the 169th Street Boys.

The Creightons are connected with another gang that wages an on-again-off-again turf war with the Gorilla Bloods, officials said.

Clivie Smith, Francis and Gentles all live on the same block in buildings whose hallways are covered in Bloods-related graffiti. Taylor lives nearby, while Cleve Smith lives in Manhattan.

Residents say while the rest of the city has undergone a renaissance in terms of plummeting crime rates, the area where the shooting occurred continues to be plagued by drug violence and seems little changed from the horror days of the 1980s.

“It’s still the same. The only thing different is the prices of the drugs went up,” said a 56-year-old man who has lived there his whole life. “Nowadays, there is no parental guidance — kids are raising kids. Now parents are trying to pay their bills and they’re working. Before, they were on welfare and were at home when the kids got home.”

Additional reporting by Douglas Montero, Kirsten Fleming and Denise Buffa

murray.weiss@nypost.com