The father and grandmother of a one-year-old boy killed in a Brooklyn shooting demanded answers Monday from “the cowards that did this” and asked if “baby lives” matter.
Davell Gardner Jr. died after being shot in the stomach Sunday in a drive-by shooting while the Gardner family was having a cookout at the Raymond Bush Playground.
His father and grandmother expressed rage and disbelief in an interview broadcast on Fox News’ “Hannity.” (RELATED: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Partially Blames New York City Crime Spike On People Needing To ‘Shoplift Some Bread Or Go Hungry’)
“For the cowards that did this, you should be ashamed of yourself because everybody talks about Black Lives Matter,” Samantha Gardner, the baby’s grandmother, said. “What about baby lives? What about teenager lives? Like, you took an innocent child from a mother and a father as well as the grandparents. I don’t think it’s fair.”
Davell Gardner begged for members of the community to come froward with any information about the identity of the assailants. “This is my son. He died. Whatever information you know, you need to tell me. It needs to be known. I need this information. Because these guys just took my son’s life. For what? He didn’t do nothing to nobody.”
The grieving father described life in New York City as “getting worse and worse … like every day is just worse. You don’t know if you’re going to live to see the next day.
Samantha Gardner had a simple message for the people who murdered her grandson. “You took my son. Go to Hell. You can go to Hell. Excuse my expression but you took something precious from me, precious from my son, something precious from his mother, and we will never see him. He cannot come back. He cannot wake back up. He was an innocent little baby and he’s gone forever.” (RELATED: ‘Defunding … Means Defunding’: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Not Satisfied With Cutting NYPD By $1B)
Demonstrators denouncing systemic racism in law enforcement and the May 25th killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis Police officer gather at a press conference in the borough of Brooklyn calling for the passing of bills to increase police accountability throughout New York state on June 4, 2020 in New York City. (Photo by Scott Heins/Getty Images)
The father said the shooting has robbed him of raising his child. “Like, I’ve got to put my son in the ground now. He’s only one. His birthday is in two months, in two months. He didn’t live to see two. He didn’t live life. It’s like I wanted to get him out of this violence before something like this happened.”
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio together with the city council agreed to cut $1 billion from the New York Police Department budget in an effort to appease those who want to defund the police.
Sixty percent of New Yorkers do not support defunding their police force and 57% oppose reducing its budget, according to a recent poll.