The mother of a 15-year-old boy who was murdered in the Bronx ten years ago visited the memorial for slain teen Lesandro “Junior” Guzman-Feliz and sent his grieving mother a touching message through the Post on Sunday.
Adela Moreira wanted grieving mom Leandra Feliz to know she shared in her pain and said to “Call on God to give [you] strength on a day-to-day basis.”
“I’m deeply sorry for [your] loss, and can understand [your] pain because I’ve dealt with the same level of pain for the last 10 years,” Moreira, 62, said through her daughter, Jenny Guity, who translated from Spanish.
Moreira’s son and Guity’s kid brother, Troy Matthew Zapata, was killed in a random drive-by-shooting in 2008 as he headed home from visiting a friend in the Adams Houses project in Melrose. Guzman-Feliz, also 15, was slaughtered the night of June 20 in Belmont by members of the vicious Trinitarios gang in a caught-on-video stabbing.
The moms haven’t met but Moreira said she’d like to express her condolences directly once more time has passed.
“It’s a huge open wound right now, but when I do have the opportunity to visit, the only thing I want to do is hug her,” she said. “I deeply regret that she has to deal with this pain.”
When Moreira visited the memorial for the slain teen, set up outside the bodega he had run into for help, she clutched a photo of her own son and cried.
“When I see the videos and everything on TV, and that the boy is 15, like my son, that hurt me,” she said. “How he was asking for aid and no one was giving him aid, it made me feel like what my son must have felt like.”
At the time of her son’s killing, not many people came forward to tell the NYPD about what they had witnessed, she said, and the case has never been solved.
The family said they’re grateful that when the videos of Guzman-Feliz’s murder were shared on social media, neighbors sent in tips about what they knew. Eight men have since been arrested for his murder.
“Without a shadow of a doubt we feel a sense of gratification for Junior’s mom, because we know what it feels like not to have closure, not to know who did it,” Guity said. “She’s always going to feel that hurt, that will never go away. She’ll always have to go put flowers on his grave.”
“But somewhere in that pain she might feel a sense of gratification that the people who killed her son are behind bars,” she added.
Guity also called on the NYPD to be more forthcoming about information in cold cases involving children.
“When you lose a loved one and the investigation is halted, it’s important for us to know who is handling the case,” she said.