5 hours ago
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The heartbroken mother of a Navy vet allegedly killed by a pair of drag racers in the Bronx said she lost her best friend in Saturday night’s senseless shooting.
“My son was like my best friend to me,” Suzette Thomas, 50, said, sobbing. “He’s the one I go to when I’m going through anything.”
Keino Campbell, 27, was shot three times in the chest in a road rage incident in the Eastchester section of the Bronx around 2 a.m. Saturday, after police said he confronted the two motorists who errantly bumped into his car.
Thomas, who last spoke to her son around 8 p.m. Friday, was still trying to comprehend his sudden death.
“Why? Why? Why,” she asked in despair, with tears streaking her face.
She said Campbell, the third of her six children, was incredibly generous with his time and money, often offering to help out with bills or babysitting a niece or nephew.
“When he was in the Navy, he used to send me money and would say, ‘Don’t let the other kids know but I know you need the money,’” Thomas told The Post.
Campbell always appreciated the sacrifices his mother made for him and his siblings, working long hours as a childcare worker, Thomas said.
“He’d tell me, ‘Mom, you did this to get us all out of poverty, I don’t want you to live in poverty,’” she said, her voice at times reduced to a whisper by grief.
After leaving the Navy, her son planned to attend school in the fall to be an electrical engineer, so he could one day start his own business and take care of his family, according to Thomas.
She said her son’s killers are heartless, adding that the fact that her son was shot three times in the chest shows that their intentions were clear.
The alleged gunman, Michael Aracena, was arrested just after midnight on Monday.
Aracena, a 20-year-old Manhattan resident, was arraigned on charges of murder, manslaughter and criminal possession of a weapon in Bronx Criminal Court Tuesday.
He was remanded by the court. His next court date is Friday.
Thomas promised to be in court Friday to come face-to-face with the man accused of taking her son’s life.
The suspect who allegedly handed Aracena the loaded gun used to commit the fatal shooting remains at large, according to law enforcement sources.
On Saturday morning, the NYPD received a 911 call just after 2 a.m. about reports of a man shot. Responding officers found Campbell inside a 2012 gray Infinity sedan at the corner of Givan Avenue and Palmer Avenue in Eastchester.
Campbell was unconscious and bleeding, with three bullet wounds to his chest, police said.
Paramedics rushed Campbell to Jacobi Hospital, where he succumbed to his injuries and was pronounced dead by hospital staff, according to cops.
Thomas was woken up about an hour later, around 3 a.m., by a frantic call from her daughter. She told Thomas that Keino had been shot and that they needed to hurry to the hospital.
By the time she arrived, her son – her best friend – was already dead.
“The doctors told me he got shot in the heart and it got shattered,” she said. “They couldn’t repair it.”
Thomas said she yearned to hug her son’s body in the hospital, but was told she couldn’t because of the murder investigation.
“It was surreal, like, ‘Is that my son lying there?’” she said in shock. “My heart is aching right now. I can’t get it out of my head, seeing him lying there.”
English (US)