A “completely innocent” Brooklyn teen was gunned down by a drive-by shooter in what cops believe was a tragic case of mistaken identity this week – with his grief-stricken sister saying he’d only gone out that night to drive his friend home from work.
Christian Montrose, 19, had just parked his car in front of his house on East 104th Street near Avenue K in Canarsie around 2:45 a.m. Tuesday when someone rolled up in a black Acura and ambushed him, NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny told reporters.
“As he gets out of the car, he’s engaged in conversation where he ends up getting shot,” Kenny said at a Thursday press briefing. “He’s shot multiple times – three gunshot wounds. One to the right side of his face, which knocks some teeth out, one to the right side of his abdomen, one to his right forearm.”
The gravely wounded teen managed to run to his apartment, where he was met by his brother, the police official said.
“He’s trying to talk to his brother but he can’t speak,” Kenny said. “He’s actually choking on his own blood.”
He was rushed to Brookdale University Hospital and Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead.
“[What] we’re looking at here right now is probably [a case of] mistaken identity,” Kenny said. “This is a good kid. He’s got no arrests. When you speak to everybody, no gang, no drugs. He doesn’t even drink alcohol. He’s a car buff. Everything this kid loves to do has to do with cars.”
“He’s basically a good kid who unfortunately resides in an area where we’ve had some significant gang violence and probably [in a case of] mistaken identity, gets shot,” the NYPD official added.
Montrose was a “peacemaker” and “beautiful soul” who only stepped outside in the pre-dawn hours to give his pal a lift, his sister, Joanna Montrose, 32, told The Post in a phone interview.
“That’s just the person that he was,” Joanna said. “He rarely ever said no to someone. I don’t think I’ve ever – I knew him since he was a baby – I don’t think he’s ever said, ‘No, I’m not going to do that.’ You know, he always wanted to help people. So of course, you know, someone asking for a favor, asking him to do something, he would just do it.”
Joanna, who lives in New Jersey, was sleeping when her mother called her with the heart-wrenching news, barely able to speak.
“I just heard the phone ringing,” she said. “And my boyfriend was like, ‘Who’s calling you at this time?’ I picked up the phone and it was her and she couldn’t really tell me what happened. She’s like, I don’t know how to tell you that – she kind of paused and then said, ‘that he was shot,’ but that’s how I found out.”
“I just got up,” she said. “So I got out of bed and I told my boyfriend, ‘I have to go there now and see what happened to him.’”
Joanna said she’d never expected such a tragic outcome.
“I just thought maybe he was somewhere he might have got grazed or something,” she said.
Christian, the youngest of seven siblings, worked for the Avis rental car company and planned to attend Lincoln Tech where he would have joined the automotive technician program, his sister said.
“Obviously he doesn’t have the chance to go there, but that was his aspiration because he loved cars,” Joanna said. “He wanted to work on cars and that was his passion.”
In his personal life, Christian was “peaceful” and “positive,” with a heart for uplifting people, inside and outside of the family, his sister said.
“Our last conversation that we had, he texted me and he said he’s grateful for me always, and that really warmed my heart,” Joanna said. “He was really a beautiful soul. I can’t even express to you how much he was just just a beautiful person.”
No arrests have been made in the senseless slaying, but authorities have determined that the shooter’s car was stolen out of the Bronx, Kenny said.
“[This] leads me to believe obviously he was followed when somebody was spinning the block, looking for the ops, they saw this poor kid and shot him,” he added. “Completely innocent.”
The slain teen’s sister echoed that sentiment.
“He’s so polite, so respectable and that’s just what we want people to know,” Joanna said. “Because we’ve seen a lot of things where people [say], ‘Oh, you know, they shot him for a reason and there’s more to the story,’ but we don’t believe that. It wasn’t his fault.”
“I don’t know how to really put that out there that he was not that kind of person,” she said. “That’s why it’s such a shock to us – because no one expected it, not even him.”
