The scooter shooter’s first victim begged for his mom after a bullet tore through his shoulder, a witness recalled on Monday — as neighbors described the alleged triggerman as a local motorcycle menace with little regard for the community.
Cops say accused shooter Thomas Abreu drove up behind the 21-year-old victim near the corner of Ashford Avenue and Arlington Avenue in East New York and put a round through his torso at about 11:15 a.m. Saturday.
“He was bleeding from the hole in his left shoulder,” Yolainy Almonte, a worker at a nearby drug store, told The Post about the victim, who she recognized as a man named Caesar who went to school with her niece.
“He kept saying, ‘Don’t let me die! Don’t let me die!’ And he was screaming, ‘Mom! Mom! I don’t want to die!’
“I said, ‘Don’t worry, you’re not going to die,’” Almonte recalled. ‘We already called 911! You’re not going to die.’”
As Almonte tended to the wounded man, the scooter-borne madman continued his bloody rampage that would leave one man dead and three others — including Caesar — wounded.
Abreu, 25, allegedly used a ghost gun to shoot four people in a span of 12 minutes in Brooklyn and Queens on Saturday morning before he was arrested.
He lived just a few blocks from where the first victim was shot, with neighbors describing him as a known nuisance — part of a group of bikers that “rides around here like freaking maniacs,” according to one local who did not want to be identified.
“He’s one of the guys who’s always riding around making noises on those shi–y bikes or riding those scooters on the sidewalks and just generally scaring the hell out of people,” the neighbor told The Post.
“They’re crazy people,” he continued. “It’s like a dozen or so of them, the same guys, all the time. They all live around here.”
Abreu is from the Dominican Republican, according to Ruben Vargas, his 55-year-old roommate who also works as the building superintendent.
A restaurant worker, Abreu has lived on Elton Street in Brooklyn for the past year and uses his now-infamous scooter to deliver food for a local Dominican joint, Vargas said.
Although he doesn’t spend a lot of time with Abreu, Vargas said he doesn’t think he’s lost his mind.
“I don’t think he’s crazy – I think he’s okay,” Vargas, who only speaks Spanish, told The Post through a translator.
“I didn’t think he would do that,” he continued. “I don’t know why he did that … I don’t know.”
Sources said Abreu — who was hospitalized and undergoing a psychiatric evaluation Monday — told detectives after his arrest in Queens that he had, in fact, been driving around on a blue scooter, and he admitted that he had a handgun on him.
But when cops nudged him to talk about the shooting, he clammed up and asked for a lawyer, according to the sources.
He was charged Sunday with one count of murder, two counts of attempted murder and three counts of criminal possession of a weapon.
Three of his victims survived, although NYPD Chief John Chell told NY1 this morning that a 44-year-old man whom Abreu allegedly shot in the face is still fighting for his life.
The two other survivors, including Caesar, were said to be in stable condition.
“I saw the pasola – that’s what we call the little scooters — then I [heard a] boom!” Almonte recalled of the shooting.
“At first I thought fireworks, but then I saw the boy on the ground and went to him.”
Another man, 86-year-old Homod Ali Saeidi, was on his way to his Queens mosque to pray when Abreu allegedly shot him the back. He later died of his wounds.
Additional reporting by Joe Marino
