It was a heart-wrenching pilgrimage.
Grieving Brooklyn dad Nicholas Avitto walked to his slain 6-year-old son’s school Monday, carrying the child’s red “Avengers’’ backpack and struggling to find solace in their weekday routine.
“I talked to him. I acted like he was there,’’ a weeping Avitto, 56, said of his youngest child, Prince Joshua “PJ” Avitto, who was murdered in the elevator of his Brooklyn building Sunday.
“We would walk three or four blocks together to the school,’’ Avitto said, breaking down again as he admitted that he just wasn’t ready to let his son go.
“With the backpack on my back, I just walked to the school,” the dad said.
“God gave me a blessing. I had him at 50. He was born on Father’s Day.”
PJ was killed and his playmate Mikayla Capers, 7, critically wounded by a knife-wielding maniac in the elevator of their East New York building as they went out for ice cream.
Avitto said PJ was a typical little boy who loved superheroes, especially Batman, and, “He was probably acting like Batman at the end, with that guy trying to stab him.
“He took my little boy from me,’’ Avitto said of the killer.
But both the dad and the boy’s stricken mom said they have faith the NYPD will catch the madman.
Also grieving for PJ was his cousin, Chicago Bulls player Taj Gibson, who tweeted about the tragic incident.
“They killed my lil super man. #rippj only two more weeks until your 7 birthday. Tears forever,” Gibson, a Fort Greene native, wrote next to a picture of the tragic boy.
Meanwhile, Mikayla’s family was holding a bedside vigil for her at New York Presbyterian-Columbia Medical Center in Manhattan.
She was suffering from a collapsed lung after being stabbed in her torso and left forearm, which her family said were defensive wounds.
“I feel blessed she’s OK — she’s in stable condition,’’ said the child’s relieved mom, Sherina Capers.
Additional reporting by Priscilla DeGregory and Amanda Lozada