HELL UP IN HARLEM! 15 YEAR OLD BOY GUNNED DOWN ON TAPE!

A Harlem teen was gunned down in front of a community garden next to his home, police said Wednesday.
Juan Otero, 15, was shot once in the torso right outside the Peaceful Valley community garden around 9:30 p.m. Tuesday at E. 117th St. and Madison Ave., cops said.

Otero's devastated mother, Jessica Montilla, said she was heading home with dinner when she stumbled upon the tragic scene.

"I came home and the streets are taped off and and this feeling just hit me," she said. "I ran from Park Ave. This cop stopped me and I'm like, 'No!' and I pushed the cop out of the way. My brother - when I saw my brother - I knew."

She rushed to her son's side, but it was too late.

"My son was ice cold when I got to him," she whispered. "I got to kiss him and hold him and he was ice cold. He was gone."

Otero was rushed to Metropolitan Hospital but could not be saved.

Neighbor Carlos Vega said he heard five shots and then spotted three people dash down the street.

"I saw three kids running," he said. "One was wearing a black hood, one carried a bookbag and had a colored shirt on."

Montilla, 35, said her son, a 10th grader, frequently ran into trouble with kids in his neighborhood, which she says is plagued by gang violence.

"There is a war. If you live here on Madison, you can't walk on Lexington. It's another gang," she said. "He got jumped a couple of times."

She said he had been shot in the hand at a party last year at a nearby apartment house, but had just been an innocent bystander.

Montilla said some people mistakenly thought her son - who she nicknamed "Chickadee" - was part of a crew because of where he lived and who he was friends with, but that he was not a troublemaker.

"He's a loved kid. I'm telling you," she said. "The worst days this kid made me feel so much better. He made me laugh."

Otero had hoped to program video games when he got older, she said.

Montilla and others placed 15 votive candles outside their building following the shooting - one for each year her son had lived.

"We put the candles over the blood. There's fifteen there. I laid one. And then everybody did," she said. "I just want to know why they did that? Why take my baby?"

"My biggest fear was losing my son. And now I lost him and I have to go on," she said through tears.

"Those damn kids need to stop shooting," she said. "You're stealing somebody's life. You're hurting families. My son could have been somebody."



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