The tragic teen gunned down at the Bryant Park skating rink is an avid hoops player who’s on three different teams — and his family is praying he won’t be left paralyzed, an older brother told The Post Monday morning.
“We don’t know anything new about his condition now,” Jorge Arias, 29, said before taking his mom and other relatives to Bellevue Hospital.
Asked what the family will do if Adonis Mera, 14, doesn’t recover, Arias had no answer.
“We ain’t ready to get into all that right now,” he said.
“I don’t think my mom can handle that.”
But Arias said Adonis, a high-school freshman, is “being strong for us.”
“He’s telling us he’s going to be all right. Telling us not to worry. He’s a brave kid,” Arias said.
There’s also been such a steady stream of friends trekking to his hospital room that “visitation is becoming a problem.”
“Last night, we couldn’t get to see him. The nurse told us he’s getting too many visitors and he needs rest,” Arias said at the family’s home in the East River Houses project in East Harlem.
Arias said his younger brother — who stands 5-foot-10 — is an excellent basketball player, adding that “his team always counts on him when it’s a close game.”
“He’s really good,” Arias said.
“They call him ‘buzzer-beater.'”
In addition to basketball, Adonis also enjoys ice skating and video games, especially Call of Duty and Grant Theft Auto, his older brother said.
A cousin who went to see Adonis on Monday morning, Carlito Duarte, 18, said Adonis remained in Bellevue’s intensive care unit and was sleeping when he visited.
Early Sunday morning, Arias said doctors told his family that Adonis had “no feelings from the waist down” after a stray bullet tore into his back as he skated on the ice at the landmark Midtown park’s popular “Winter Village” attraction.
On Sunday, a police source said it appeared that Adonis was paralyzed.
Suspected gang member Corey Dunton, 16, of The Bronx, allegedly used a .22-caliber pistol to open fire on another skater, Javier Contreras, 20, of Manhattan, after Contreras refused to surrender his $680, Marmot-brand “Mammoth” parka to Dunton.
Contreras was struck in the hip and the hand and is also being treated at Bellevue.
His highly coveted coat, known on the streets as a “Biggie,” was discontinued by the manufacturer after being linked to the murders of two city teens in 2010 and earlier this year.
Dunton, who is charged with attempted murder, assault, weapons possession and reckless endangerment, taunted photographers as he was led to court Monday, shouting, “F— all you ni–as! It wasn’t over a jacket, it was over your mother, ni–a!”
Dunton posted a Facebook message early Friday that said would be going to Bryant Park with an “amp,” which police sources said is slang for a gun.
After a tipster identified him as the alleged shooter, Dunton also posted a series of frenzied Facebook messages Sunday morning in which he all but confessed as cops pounded on his apartment door to arrest him.
“LOVE ALL MY REAL N—AS ALL MY REAL SHORTYS FEDS TRIEN KICK DOWN MY DOOR ITS OVER WERE DO I GO FROM HEREEEEE MANNNNN DO I END MY LIFE IDK WAT TO DO I F—KED UP,’’ Dunton wrote at one point.
And while he vowed that “IM GOIN OUT WITH A BANG!!!!!!!” and “I AINT GOIN TO JAIL I REATHER TAKE MY LIFE!!” Dunton meekly surrendered after the hourlong standoff.
Cops suspect Dunton is a member of the Bloods gang.