The two youngsters caught in the middle of brazen shooting in the Bronx can’t sleep after narrowly dodging death — and their father is now begging for an end to the gun violence that’s been gripping the Big Apple.
The still-shaken dad, who only identified himself as Christian, broke his silence Monday, telling reporters that he helplessly watched as his kids, 5-year-old Christian and 13-year-old Mia, were nearly gunned down just outside the family’s apartment last week.
“I saw it all live from my window,” he recalled in Spanish, while clutching the little boy. “The kids went to the bodega to buy sweets and when the girl was leaving, she heard three shots. She ran after her little brother and she went to seek safety in the bodega.”
“The guy kept shooting.”
The dad also decried the surge in shootings across the five boroughs this year.
“Please stop this wave of delinquency on our streets,” he said. “It’s a miracle my kids are alive. Thank God, but it could happen to any other child or parent.”
Christian and his wife, Diana, said both of their kids are forever scarred by the harrowing incident last Thursday that happened just steps from the family’s first-floor apartment in the Claremont section of the Bronx.
“We’re traumatized,” the dad said. “My daughter can’t move her arm. The boy has bruises. They have trauma. They can’t sleep. They are nervous.”
He added, “The boy sleeps on top of me, the girl sleeps by my side. I can’t even go to the bathroom. They are, ‘Papi, Papi, Papi.'”
The siblings were headed to the shop when at least a dozen shots rang out around 7 p.m. Thursday. As the masked gunman fired, his target knocked the kids down while trying to flee the bullets, stunning video shows.
The kids’ mother, Diana, said the shooter “trampled over the kids.”
“They were coming back home,” she said. “The person ran and crashed into the kids and even though the kids fell to the ground, they kept shooting.”
Their father, meanwhile, watched as his daughter bravely clutched her little brother to protect him.
The suspect hit the fleeing man in the back and legs before bolting on a scooter — and remains on the loose, according to police.
The victim is expected to survive his wounds, police said.
The two children were miraculously unhurt but were left traumatized — with the 5-year-old boy so shaken by his brush with death that he won’t leave his father’s side.
The callousness of the brazen shooting stunned even hardened locals.
“The immediate thing to do is get the police officers out of the cars and have them walk the beat,” said longtime resident Debrah Myers. “They are never normally out here.”
Christian and Diana said they also wanted to make it clear that their children had nothing to do with the people involved in the shooting.
“We are an honest, hardworking family,” the dad said.