The man shot point-blank in the head during a horrific caught-on-video robbery at a Manhattan diner is a 37-year-old dad who can’t speak yet but is miraculously still alive, said his weeping mom Friday.
Grace Peña, 70, broke down in tears at the Washington Heights apartment she shares with her son Harrison Ferreiras as she looked at a Facebook photo of him holding his now-8-year-old daughter when the little girl was a toddler in 2017.
“I am heartbroken,” said Peña, who uses a walker to get around, in Spanish to The Post through a translator — adding that the family has yet to tell her granddaughter that the child’s father was gravely injured in the stick-up.
Peña said she has been keeping vigil for the past two days by her son’s bedside in the intensive care unit of the Metropolitan Hospital Center, where he is hooked up to tubes and can’t speak but remains alert — flashing “grateful” thumbs-up signs at his medical caretakers.
“[Police] came knocking on my door,” Peña recalled of the moment she learned of the shooting. “Even if I had to crawl, I would have gone [to the hospital]. I was crying.”
Ferreiras was eating at the counter of the Seafood King Fish Market at Broadway and West 163rd Street just before 2 a.m. Wednesday when the masked robber — who had already stolen cash and cell phones from both the patron and a cashier — senselessly pressed a distinctive blue gun against the diner’s head and fired a single shot, hitting him in the right cheek.
Ferreiras collapsed to the floor as a pool of blood formed around him.
He seemed to attempt to get up before the cashier, who had been hiding behind the counter, rushed to his side, according to footage obtained by The Post.
He was hospitalized in critical condition, police said.
A worker at the eatery Friday said Ferreiras is a fairly frequent customer who typically orders “salmon, yellow rice, sometimes soup.
“I feel bad because he’s a good person, a good customer. He respects everyone — no trouble with him,” she said.
Two NYPD detectives stopped by the diner for about 10 minutes Friday asking information about workers, the employee said.
Since Ferreiras’ plight became known, “his phone has not stopped ringing,” Peña said.
“Harrison is known by everyone in the neighborhood,” she said. “The doctors have to stop people going to the hospital.
“People are kind, they are throwing themselves on the floor because of this tragedy,” she added, referring to their grief and sadness. “The doctors said he is very loved because of all the people coming to see him.”
She described her son — the youngest of her three children — as “a good kid” who often does favors for neighbors on the block.
“If he was a guy from the streets, it would be a different story,” she said. “Why my son?
“I gave my kids education. … But that [shooter] did what he did. That stuff hurts.”
She said she needs her critically injured son back home to find “peace in [her] heart.
“Of course I’d love to go to the doctor and he can tell me, ‘Oh, you’ll have your son back home healthy and safe,’ but it’s not like that. It’s a process. It’s a long process,” Peña said.
She is also hoping to find justice — with her son’s shooter behind bars.
“I want everybody to know,” Peña said. “I want the person who did this to go to jail, lock him up. He has to pay for what he did. They have to find him and make him pay for what he did.”
The gunman, who had not been caught by Friday, is described as around 5-foot-5 and was last seen wearing black clothing, a black hat and mask.
The callous shooter was also seen carrying a black plastic bag, holding the money he’d allegedly forced the cashier to fork over from the register.
Meanwhile, Ferreiras’ third-grade daughter — who was shielded from the news of what happened to her father — was kept home from school Thursday and Friday.
“She and her father are very close. She loves her father a lot, a lot,” said the girl’s other grandmother, who did not want to be identified. “Maybe if we tell her, we’ll have to take her to the hospital because she loves him a lot.
“We do things with her so she doesn’t ask for him,” the 61-year-old woman added. “Sometimes he goes to the hospital because he has problems with his stomach. If she asks, I’ll tell her he’s in the hospital because he has pains.”
Ferreiras was known to bring his daughter out to eat and to the movies, the grandmother said.
“Every time she calls, ‘Daddy, bring me pizza, bring me McDonalds,’ he’ll do it,’ ” she said.
“My daughter is crying. Me, too. … Everybody is crying. It’s terrible,” the woman added. “I feel very, very sad, not good. I have a son. … I love {Ferreiras] like [he is] my son, too. He’s a nice person, beautiful. Never in my life [have I seen] him fight with anybody. He has a good heart.
“I can’t go to see him,” she said, shaking her head. “May God help him stay alive.”
