Gerald Spears (
)
A shaken Brooklyn man today described how he frantically tried to shield his young son from a wild gun battle that erupted inside a shoe store — but the boy wound up hit, along with a city school teacher.
“Before I knew it, I heard pow, pow, pow! It was the wild west in there,” said a stunned Brian Harper, 54, whose son, Julian, was shot in the leg in the crossfire between a trigger-happy store security guard and another armed thug inside Rugged Sole in Crown Heights.
Harper said he had just taken his sixth-grade boy into the shop at 298 Utica Ave. around 8 p.m. yesterday to buy the boy sneakers when he noticed the two men arguing.
Cops said pair had been fighting over a cell-phone charger in the store earlier in the evening and that the customer left, only to return and start arguing again.
“This guy walked in clutching his hand by his waist, and he said to the other guy behind the counter, ‘Yo, what’s up with you?’ and the other guy responded, ‘ What’s up with you?’ ” recalled Harper, a mailroom supervisor at Queensborough Community College.
“It was a tone of hostility. It made me stop and look around,’’ he said.
“That’s when [the first guy] pulled his gun out from his waistband, and he said, ‘Now, what’s up with you!’ And then I couldn’t believe that this other man pulled out a weapon, too.
“I did my best to protect my son. I tried to act like a shield for him,’’ the dad said, noting that one bullet went through his own pant leg but didn’t hit him.
“I pulled my son close to my body and wrapped myself around him. We braced ourselves against a shoe display. And I held him tight and prayed that nothing hit us.
“I told him not to look and that it was going to be OK. When it was all over, I looked down at my son. He didn’t make a sound, but he was bleeding.
“I couldn’t tell you what I was thinking,’’ Harper said. “ I just knew I had to take care of my son.
He said he carried the bleeding boy out of the store, and, “I put him in the car, and I drove him to Kings County Hospital.
“ The blood was all soaked up in his pants,’’ the dad said. “He wasn’t crying. He was being real brave. But at the same time, I couldn’t help but think he was just traumatized.
“In the car, he was holding his leg. And when I asked him how he was doing, he said that it hurt. He said he was in pain, but he wasn’t crying.”
Later, “he told me he knows he isn’t going to die and that makes him feel better,’’ Harper said.
The dad declined to let his son talk, saying the family has already met with a lawyer.
The boy’s stricken mom, Paula Harper, said her son’s “OK.
“When I heard what happened … ” she said before trailing off.
Then, “I’m his mother, I was just afraid for their lives. But he’s home, he’s upstairs resting.’’
Added her husband, “ Death just skipped over us. We are so blessed and very lucky.”
In addition to Julian, 34-year-old teacher Christopher Townsend was grazed in the left forearm. He also was treated at Kings County and released.
“I was just in there looking at shoes, hats and clothes,’’ said Townsend, who declined to say where he worked.
“The bullets just rang out after that, and I headed for the door, and I noticed I was hit. I didn’t notice until I looked down at my hand.’’
He said he fled to a clothing store next-door.
Both shooters had illegal weapons, authorities said.
Store security guard Kenneth Meeks, 45, was charged with criminal possession of a weapon — a .9mm Bryco handgun — assault and reckless endangerment.
Meeks, who also goes as “Bizzie” and is from East New York, was ordered held on $100,000 bail at his arraignment early Wednesday at Brooklyn Criminal Court.
It wasn’t Meek’s first run-in with the law — sources said the guard has 13 prior arrests, including for robbery and burglary. He also works as a security guard for a nearby C-Town.
Police were still hunting Meeks’ foe, Gerald Spears, 23, who was armed with a black handgun.
It wasn’t immediately clear how many shots were fired and by whom, or who hit the innocent bystanders.
Spears has 18 busts on his rap sheet, including assault, robbery, and criminal possession of a weapon, sources said. He is 5-foot-5 and 180 pounds, police said.
The shoe-store owner said Spears comes into the store frequently harassing workers.
“He is a neighborhood guy, bothers employees, and he bothers the business,” said Sang Han, 59. “Young guy—bad temper. He gets into arguments.”
But Brian Harper had harsh words for both gunmen.
“I just want to tell those two men who started all this: Enough with the guns,’’ he said. “Death is for all time. It’s forever. We don’t come back in a week. Guns are for cops.”
Meeks’ sister rushed to the scene yesterday, worried that her brother was hurt.
“They won’t tell me why they took him away,” she said, declining to give her name.
Additional reporting by
Dan MacLeod, Kevin Sheehan and James Cahalan
frosario@nypost.com