A heartbroken Queens dad described to The Post on Sunday cradling his dying 10-year-old son in his arms — after the boy had been shot in a dispute between neighbors over a driveway.
Albert Wallace, 57, said he had brought his son, Justin, to his sister’s house Saturday evening in Far Rockaway and was in the basement with her when they heard shots outside.
Wallace ran outside, and, “I said, ‘Why is my son laying right here?’
“I go to my son, and when I turned him over, I see this pile of blood,” the father said.
“And when I saw the pile of blood, I said ‘Justin, Justin, are you OK, son? You’re not responding, You’re not responding.’”
Wallace said he believes that the shooting occurred over a yearslong beef between his sister’s family and their neighbors over a shared driveway. Law-enforcement sources confirmed the suspected shooting motive to The Post.
A neighborhood man pulled the trigger, Wallace said.
“Right after the shooting, he drove out,” Wallace said.
The dad said his nephew had left his car parked in front outside as he unloaded it Saturday, prompting the male neighbor to run over and open fire on them.
“My nephew was going inside when the guy came running around … and [shot]. My nephew was opening the door, my son was inside the door, and he got shot,” Wallace said.
Wallace said he lifted up the sixth-grader’s shirt to discover that the boy had been struck by a bullet in the abdomen.
“I felt it and felt the hardness when I scream out and say, ‘Call 911! Please let them come because they are one minute away from my sister’s house!’ ” he said.
The dad said that emergency responders arrived the scene and tried to move the boy.
“What hurt me was to see this EMT guys on my son like he is dead meat, dead cow,” said Wallace, whose eyes were filled with tears.
“Once they put him into the ambulance, they started to pump his chest, so I knew something wasn’t right,” he said.
Additional reporting by Larry Celona
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