The family of a 15-year-old Harlem teen gunned down in Riverbank State Park breathed a sigh of relief on Monday after state police announced his alleged killer had been arrested.
“We’re very much relieved,” Emily Tejada, cousin of slain teen Wesley Vasquez, told the Daily News. “We want to get justice for Wesley.”
Anibal Cruz, 36, was charged with second-degree murder and criminal possession of a weapon at the NYPD’s 30th Precinct stationhouse on W. 151st St. near Convent Ave., according to city and state police.
Wesley was inside the park off Riverside Drive at 6:42 p.m. on Saturday when he was cut down in a hail of gunfire that left him suffering multiple gunshot wounds, state cops said.
A witness told The News that a group consisting of three teens and a man confronted the young victim on his way to play basketball, and the two parties traded insults while another woman attempted to intervene.
The man pulled a gun and opened fire, shooting past the would-be peacekeeper and striking Wesley at least twice, the witness recounted.
“It was wild, he could have killed her,” said the witness, who declined to give his name for fear of reprisal. “They shot passed her and got him. It was mad crazy.”
Park goer Clark Peña recalled hearing up to seven gunshots ring out near the basketball courts, before rushing to investigate. He discovered the teen lying facedown near basketball courts at the park’s southern edge.
”When I arrived, I immediately saw this man was bleeding underneath, and he was completely unresponsive,” said Peña, who lives nearby.
Peña said he gave the teen chest compressions while a police officer applied a tourniquet to a gunshot wound on the boy’s leg.
”When he was turned over we noticed a wound to his upper right chest area,” he added. “Then we turned him over again to see if there was an exit wound but there was no exit wound.”
”He was totally unresponsive unfortunately. He didn’t look well. We did our best,” Peña…
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