Marco Pina, 22, who emigrated with his family from Mexico 20 years ago when he was a toddler, said New York City is the only home he knows and he deserved better.

“I’ve never lived anywhere else,” Pina said in a statement nearly a month after he clashed with members of the Angels during a live Fox News broadcast.

“I work to support my child and I’ve never broken the law. Now I will tell my story to the [district attorney] and will seek justice, I’m not afraid anymore,” he added.

Pina crossed paths with the Angels on Feb. 7 as Sliwa, their longtime leader, was being interviewed in prime time by Fox News host Sean Hannity about crime in the area.

A group of Angels sporting their signature red berets and bomber jackets broke away to tend to an off-screen disturbance.

At Sliwa’s direction, the camera panned to show them confronting Pina, pushing him to the sidewalk and placing him in a headlock.

As the camera rolled, Sliwa labeled the man a “migrant.”

“Our guys have just taken down one of the migrant guys on the corner of 42nd and Seventh where all of this has taken place,” Sliwa told Hannity as he threw his hands in the air.

“They’ve taken over!”

Sliwa also called Pina a “shoplifter,” an allegation cops could not substantiate.

“Let’s just say we gave him a little pain compliance,” Sliwa, the 2021 GOP mayoral candidate, continued during the broadcast. “His mother back in Venezuela felt the vibrations. He’s sucking concrete.”

In a Tuesday statement, Sliwa repeated claims that Pina initiated the encounter by “pushing and shoving through the film crew despite being told by the security of the film crew to ‘please stay back’ repeatedly.

“The Guardian Angels stand against hate and we pride ourselves on our diversity and inclusivity,” he added.

Police said Pina was issued a summons for disorderly conduct because he was acting in “a loud, threatening manner causing public alarm.”

Pina said he feared that his immigration status would be in jeopardy if he stood up to a well-known man like Sliwa.

“It has taken me some time to come forward,” he said. “I’m a nobody in this city, Curtis Sliwa is famous. I was intimidated and scared since I’m only protected by DACA, a temporary permit for immigrants like myself that arrived here as babies.”

Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), established by the Obama administration in 2012, offers a lifeline to specific undocumented individuals in the United States, particularly for those who entered the country as minors. The policy provides them with a renewable two-year reprieve from deportation and the chance to obtain work permit eligibility.

The incident came amid rising tensions in New York City, where officials have struggled to handle an ongoing rise in migrant arrivals for more than a year.

In one high-profile incident, a group of migrants attacked two NYPD officers outside a shelter in Times Square on Jan. 27, sparking outrage.

Pina’s lawyer, Patricia Lynch, said Pina continues to suffer from the Angels’ beatdown.

“The incident aired live on Sean Hannity, where millions of people watched Mr. Marco Pina being thrown to the ground and put into an illegal chokehold, and for Mr. Pina to have his character and reputation assaulted after this horrific incident was tantamount to pouring salt in his wound,” said Lynch, a lawyer at Sacco & Fillas.

Pina plans to file a civil suit in Manhattan Supreme Court along with making a complaint with Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg. The DA’s office previously said it’s investigating the incident.

Pina also received support from Hispanics Across America spokesman Fernando Mateo, who was defeated by Sliwa in the 2021 Republican mayoral primary.

“He’s not a recent immigrant. He’s not a looter, not a thief,” Mateo said of Pina. “He was body-slammed and his face was pushed against the concrete. His friends who tried to support him were pushed to the streets.”

Kenneth Taveras, 33, was shot multiple times in the chest at about 10:35 p.m. Sunday in a parking lot at the Polo Grounds Towers, a NYCHA complex in Washington Heights, according to cops

“He was excited to join the Army,” the victim’s mother Juana Taveras said. “His elder brother was in the Navy and Marines, but now he’s back. He always used to look up to his brother and was always interested in joining the services.”

Medics rushed Kenneth Taveras to Lincoln Hospital in the Bronx, but he could not be saved.

The grieving mother was visiting relatives in Jersey City when she got the news.

“When I came back the area was taped and the police were here,” she said. “They had already taken him to the hospital. I could not even see him until this morning.”

Three to five men drove off in a black pickup truck and are being sought, police said.

Kenneth Taveras had enlisted in the Army and was scheduled to report for duty in three months. He was enjoying letting his hair grow in the meantime, knowing a buzz cut was in his future.

The parking lot where he was killed is just outside the building where Taveras, the youngest of five siblings, shared an apartment with his mother and sister.

“He grew up here,” the mother said. “We never bother anyone. I don’t talk to anyone much except saying hello. I don’t know who did this, but I hope they have cameras in the parking lot. I think there are two cameras.”

“He was my baby,” she added. “When I last spoke to him yesterday, he was washing clothes in the washing machine.”

The grieving mother is mystified by a motive.

“No one has come to speak to me yet,” she said. “I have no idea what’s going on. No cops have told me anything.”

The victim had three arrests on his record, including busts for possession of a loaded gun and for assault, police sources said. His most recent arrest was in 2016.

Kenneth Taveras used to work for NYCHA before he took a job as a cleaner in a friend’s beauty salon near their home, his mother said. He had a girlfriend in Florida who was rushed to New York after getting the news.

So far this year through Feb. 25, 44 people citywide have been victims of homicides, a 27% downtick from the same period last year that saw 60 people slain, NYPD stats show.

But murders in the NYPD’s 32nd Precinct where Taveras was killed are up. Two people were killed in the precinct this year as of Sunday. By the same point last year just one person was the victim of a homicide.

Shootings are down so far this year citywide, with 109 incidents as of Feb. 25 compared with 159 by the same time in 2023.

“The justice system does not seem to work,” DeJesus, 49, told the Daily News. “These past few years our family has been through so much pain.”

Deshaun Coleman gunned down DeJesus’ son in 2012 but was ultimately convicted only of weapon possession. Coleman’s lawyers convinced a jury the suspect was defending himself when he shot Victor Maldonado on a Bronx street and so he beat murder and manslaughter charges.

Coleman, now 46 and back on the street for a little over a year, was arrested last month and charged with shooting to death a longtime friend of DeJesus’ daughter just two blocks from where her son was slain.

Coleman had been released on parole in DeJesus’ son’s case in January 2023.

“When somebody says, ‘Oh, my name is Deshaun,’ or even with the last name Coleman, it just drives me nuts,” DeJesus said.

Cops nabbed Coleman six days after Hasan Richburg, 26, was gunned down Feb. 8

“He killed that other young man and got away with it,” Richburg’s brother, Harry James Richburg, 45, told the Daily News. “People in the neighborhood was scared of him because of that.”

Last month’s slaying rocked DeJesus’ family too. DeJesus’ daughter was longtime friends with the new victim.

“They grew up together,” DeJesus said. “She said, ‘Oh Mom, you know a friend of mine was killed right there in Kingsbridge. And he had daughters, he had a family.’”

Then came news of the arrest.

“When I told my daughter, she’s like, “Oh my God, it’s the same guy,'” DeJesus said. “And that’s when it hit us.”

DeJesus’ 19-year-old son was a week away from taking his physical to enlist in the Navy when he was shot in the torso on Heath Ave. near W. Kingsbridge Road on Oct. 1, 2012.

DeJesus told reporters at the time she couldn’t understand how ex-con Coleman was free given his lengthy criminal history. “He should’ve never been able to be on the street,” she told a DNAinfo reporter the week of her son’s death.

Coleman had 19 previous arrests before Richburg’s death on charges including robbery and possession of a controlled substance, police said. He went to prison in 2007 for a Bronx robbery conviction and was released three-and-a-half years later.

He was sentenced to up to 12 years in prison for weapon possession in Maldonado’s death. DeJesus says if Coleman had been convicted of murder in her son’s death her daughter’s friend would be alive today.

Maldonado, who planned on enlisting in the Navy after his sister’s upcoming birthday, got embroiled in an argument two girls were having and tried to act as a peacemaker, his family said.

The girls were quarreling because Coleman’s sister had walked into a building on Heath Ave. and failed to say thank you to the other girl, who had been holding the door for her. During the clash Coleman’s sister called her brother, according to court records.

Coleman claimed to cops his sister was being blocked from entering the building and that during a scuffle he took the weapon from Maldonado and then it “just went off.”

“I grabbed his belt loop and realized he had a gun.” Coleman told authorities, according to court documents.

“I reached for it and took it away from him. Then I shot at him. I wasn’t aiming at him. It just went off. Yeah I shot the gun after he had let go. I don’t know what happened to the kid. I went over to the other guy still holding the gun and said, “Is it over now?” Then I went in the apartment. I never called 911.”

But his own sister told authorities Coleman had arrived with the gun and she had pleaded with him not to shoot Maldonado.

“They started arguing. And that’s when I got in the middle because he got this gun and I was like stop!,” Theresa Coleman told investigators, according to court papers. “I didn’t want none of this to happen.”

Javier Solano, Coleman’s lawyer at the time, said he feels bad for Maldonado’s mother but believes the jury got it right.

“Ultimately, the jury believed us and came to the conclusion that prosecutors could not disprove self defense,” Solano said. “That was his defense all along. He was just thankful that the jury felt the same way.”

DeJesus still isn’t buying it.

“Without fail for the past 11 years we go every year to the spot where it happened,” she said. “We light candles every single year. Whether it’s rain, whether it’s cold, it doesn’t matter.”

Now the Richburg family is feeling a similar agony.

“My son is taking it really hard because Hasan is the one who taught him how to swim,” said RIchburg’s sister Madalene Richburg, 34. “(Hasan) was very chill, calm. Quiet but silly. Always making jokes.”

A neighbor said Richburg was one of three brothers who were raised by an aunt after both of their parents died.

“I have a lot of empathy for them,” the neighbor, who gave his name only as Manuel, said.  “I feel bad for them. I want to cry.”

He described Richburg as a “tall handsome man” who “didn’t know his potential.”

Richburg was released on parole from prison in 2019, records show, after serving two years on Bronx convictions for weapon and drug possession along with criminal mischief.

“This kid that came out, he was trying to get his life straight,” said Manuel. “I can tell you that.”

Richburg was currently working as a lab technician and had six kids.

At Richburg’s funeral service at Riverdale Funeral Home in Manhattan on Feb. 25, Harry James Richburg said his brother was targeted by Coleman.

“Word on the street is that some girl that (Coleman) was dating, she was attracted to my brother,” he said, adding that the shooting was motivated by “jealousy” and “animosity.”

RIchburg was shot multiple times in the torso in an apartment building on W. Kingsbridge Road near Webb Ave. He managed to make it part way down the block and was found outside Kennedy Fried Chicken & Pizza, about three blocks from his home. He died at St. Barnabas Hospital.

Ring doorbell video of the slaying seen by the Daily News shows Hasan Richburg sitting on steps inside the building as the sound of a gun cocks. A moment later the killer emerges, aiming a gun at Richburg and ordering him to his feet. Richburg raises his arms briefly before fleeing off camera and the gunman fires off several shots before turning and heading back up the steps.

Richburg’s cousin remembered him as caring, particularly when it came to children.

“Years ago our family got into a really bad bus accident,” the 42-year-old cousin, who gave her name as Candy, recalled. “We were leaving a family picnic…He jumped right in to get all of the children off the bus. He jumped right into action. He was throwing children out the window. He was able to get all the kids off the bus.”

DeJesus’ daughter, Nayiliana, went to high school with Richburg at Public School 310, about a block from the scenes of both slayings.

“I grew up in the same neighborhood,” Nayiliana, 27, said. “I moved away from the neighborhood after my brother got shot … But we all used to hang out. We all knew each other all those years.”

She said Richburg had a good sense of humor despite a difficult childhood.

“He was always a funny kid,” she said. “My brother knew him too. He never had issues. He tried to survive on his own. His mother died first and then his father died. He basically was a kid surviving.”

DeJesus remembers the anguish of burying a son who was gunned down on the street and hates to see another family go through that.

“My son will never come back and neither will the other young man,” DeJesus said. “But to prevent any more deaths they need to keep him in jail for life.”

Coleman is being held without bail on Rikers Island. He is due back in Bronx Criminal Court on the new murder charges March 14.

Greco, Adams’ director of Asian affairs, has for months been the subject of a city Department of Investigation probe examining whether she attempted to milk perks out of her government job. It wasn’t immediately clear if Thursday’s FBI raids, which targeted two homes that Greco owns on Gillespie Avenue in Pelham Bay, are related to the DOI investigation.

A law enforcement source described the Thursday action as “court-authorized law enforcement activity.”

According to the news outlet The City, FBI agents also Thursday raided offices of the New World Mall in Queens, where Greco helped host a series of fundraisers for Adams’ 2021 campaign that generated tens of thousands of dollars in contributions, some of which have raised straw donor concerns.

An Adams administration official confirmed after the raids that Greco has been placed on leave, but wouldn’t say whether she’s still drawing a salary while away from her post. The official said the mayor’s office hasn’t been contacted by either the FBI or federal prosecutors about the matter.

Greco did not return phone calls or text messages.

The raids on Gillespie Avenue were first reported by News12 The Bronx. Video posted on X by freelance journalist Oliya Scootercaster showed FBI agents exiting one of Greco’s homes carrying boxes and bags that they loaded into awaiting SUVs.

A next-door neighbor told The News that the FBI agents first arrived at 6 a.m. Thursday.

“They have been in and out of the house. The whole road crossing was blocked,” said the neighbor.

Last year, The City first reported Greco was being probed by the city Department of Investigation based on a referral from the mayor’s office, but a DOI spokesperson would not divulge what that investigation’s focus was at the time. A spokesperson for DOI also declined comment Thursday.

The DOI probe came on the heels of The City’s reporting that Greco, who has worked for Adams since he was Brooklyn borough president, asked a volunteer for the mayor’s 2021 campaign to renovate her Bronx home for free before getting a job in the Adams administration.

That outlet also reported that after that campaign volunteer was hired by the city, Greco continued to demand he perform work on her home while on the city’s time.  Additionally, the outlet reported Greco had sought a $10,000 contribution to a nonprofit she founded from a businessman in exchange for admission to a Chinese-themed government event at Gracie Mansion hosted by Adams.

When asked about the feds’ activity at Greco’s addresses, Adams spokesman Fabien Levy said that “our administration will always follow the law.”

“We always expect all our employees to adhere to the strictest ethical guidelines. As we have repeatedly said, we don’t comment on matters that are under review, but will fully cooperate with any review underway,” Levy added. “The mayor has not been accused of any wrongdoing.”

Property records show Greco bought one of the raided homes for $850,000 just this past Oct. 16. She holds a $680,000 mortgage on the property, records show.

Greco earns $100,000 annually in her city job, according to payroll records.

In paperwork for the $680,000 mortgage, Greco identified herself as residing at a second one-family home just across the street. That’s the second property that was targeted by the feds Thursday.

Property records show Greco owns the second property with Nickolas Greco, her husband.

It’s unclear which of the two buildings Greco permanently resides in.

The feds’ interest in Greco comes as the mayor himself faces a federal probe into his ties to Turkey. As part of that investigation, the FBI raided the homes of Brianna Suggs, a top fundraiser for Adams, and City Hall staffer Rana Abbasova. The FBI also seized the mayor’s electronic devices as part of their investigation.

It’s unclear if the raid in the Bronx is tied to that probe into foreign involvement in local politics.

Records show Greco likely has her own connections to a foreign government.

It first emerged last year that Greco served as a consultant to multiple local Chinese interest groups that receive funding from Beijing’s Communist government. And in a previously unknown wrinkle, Greco also identified herself in a 2014 letter reviewed by The News as the CEO of the New York Sino Agricultural Organization, a Chinese investment group.

Under Greco’s leadership, the Sino organization was in talks in the mid-2010s with the upstate municipality of Warwick about purchasing the shuttered Mid-Orange Correctional Facility in hopes of turning it into an “agricultural education center,” according to a lawsuit filed in Orange County Supreme Court in 2021.

In 2013, Warwick Town Supervisor Mike Sweeton told the Times Herald-Record that the Chinese government was actually behind the bid to buy the old prison. Citing Sweeton, the local newspaper reported at the time that China’s government was hoping to turn the closed prison into “an agricultural university or a vocational school, where they can learn about American agricultural technology.”

Sino’s bid to buy the old prison ultimately never came to fruition.

Police responding to a 911 call at the shelter on Central Park North near Fifth Ave. about 11:30 a.m. found the 24-year-old victim stabbed in the back and stomach, cops said.

The attack took place on the fourth floor of the Lincoln Correctional Facility, which was shuttered in 2019 but reopened recently to provide housing for some of the thousands of asylum seekers coming into the city, police and witnesses said.

“I heard two people fighting on the fourth floor. They spoke Spanish,” shelter resident Adam Hassan said.

Medics took the victim to Mount Sinai Morningside hospital for treatment. He was seriously wounded but was expected to recover, cops aid.

Cops took a 27-year-old person of interest into custody at the scene for questioning. No charges were immediately filed. Both the person of interest and the victim are believed to be migrants, police sources said.

Wednesday’s attack occurred less than a week after a 17-year-old boy was stabbed outside a Times Square migrant shelter on 42nd St. near Eighth Ave. Michael Colome, 22, and five teens younger than 16 were apprehended for the attack. Sixteen others involved in the brawl were still being sought by police.

Last week’s attack took place at the Candler Building, a vacant office tower that has been converted into a migrant shelter and was the scene of a caught-on-video attack on cops that roiled the city in January.

With Rocco Parascandola

The case against Cory Martin, 36 — who’s on trial for strangling and chopping up 26-year-old Brandy Odom in April 2018 — has been unfolding in Brooklyn Federal Court including DNA evidence testimony Wednesday from a criminalist with the city Medical Examiner’s office.

Jurors previously got to hear how Martin learned to cover his tracks — from watching television, according to prosecutors.

“He didn’t want the house after he committed the crime to be an active crime scene. So he focused a lot on getting rid of or concealing evidence,” his accomplice turned government cooperator, Adelle Anderson, said, as part of two days of blockbuster testimony.

Brandy Odom, 26, was found dismembered in Canarsie Park in April, police said. No arrests have been made.

Anderson, 35, who lived with Martin and Odom in Rosedale, Queens, was arrested alongside the accused pimp in 2020 — two years after a dog walker found Odom’s dismembered torso in Canarsie Park in Brooklyn. Police found her limbs in garbage bags nearby.

As she took the witness stand, Anderson testified he made her watch the two TV shows with him. “He would discuss crime scenes and what not to do, and what things to do to avoid being caught by the police,” she said.

The crime bore some resemblance to fictional killer Dexter Morgan, who on Showtime’s “Dexter” would methodically cut up bodies and dump the severed remains.

While Dexter followed a code of only targeting killers who escaped justice, Martin had something else in mind, prosecutors say: He wanted to collect on $200,000 in life insurance policies on Odom, which Anderson took out in her name.

He made Anderson watch “The First 48” to learn about police tactics, like how investigators use blue ultraviolet light to find forensic evidence.

Martin meant for someone to find the body, prosecutors said, because he wouldn’t be able to collect the insurance payout otherwise.

Martin’s defense attorneys lay the entire plot on Anderson, stating that she was behind the life insurance scheme and is spinning a tale to stay out of prison, while also grilling her about the alleged lies she told police and her history of shoplifting and fraud.

Anderson described Odom’s murder, and her toxic relationship with Martin, on Wednesday and Thursday of last week. She and Martin started dating on-and-off since their teens, when they were students at Canarsie High School.

“He was my high school sweetheart,” she said. But he abused her throughout their relationship, she claimed.

Before moving in with Martin in his Rosedale, Queens home, she had two sons with other men and that constantly enraged him, Anderson said.

Anderson started getting into sex work around 2014, she said, and she met Odom — who was also doing sex work — when the victim moved into her sister’s apartment on Fulton St. in Brooklyn.

Anderson was living downstairs, and the two became friends and moved in with each other. In 2016, they started using Martin’s Queens home for their trade, and started living with him.

He became their pimp and controlled their lives — forcing them to remain naked whenever they were in the house and prohibiting them from showering to satisfy a fetish, Anderson said.

He also beat and repeatedly raped Anderson, she told the jury.

“There was holes all in the walls throughout the house,” she said. “From me dodging the hits.”

Martin talked about killing Anderson’s son and the boy’s father, and about murdering one of his friends, she said. He made her take out life insurance policies against her sons and the youngest child’s dad, but eventually he settled on Odom, and had Anderson pretend to be her sister to take out two policies in her name, she said.

At first, Martin tried to get a friend, Samson Alabi, to shoot Odom in a staged robbery, but Alabi testified last week that he wouldn’t do it.

Finally, in April 2018, after Martin sent Anderson and their newborn daughter to stay with her mother, he killed Odom, Anderson testified.

He sent her a coded text message about a pair of black UGGs shoes to let her know it was done, she said.

“My heart dropped and I said, ‘Oh, s–t he really did it,” she recounted.

Anderson reunited with Martin, and after a takeout dinner from Red Lobster,  he went to work disposing of the body. He showed her Odom’s naked corpse in the bedroom, she said. The window was open to help mask the time of death.

“He said this is the first time he’s ever felt somebody’s life leave their body,” Anderson recounted, adding, “He told me that he choked her until she wasn’t breathing no more.”

Martin made Anderson tape heavy-duty garbage bags to every surface in their bathroom, she said. It took two days for Martin to cut up her body, and he had to go to Home Depot to get a motorized saw.

The sound woke her up as she slept one morning, and when she stormed into the bathroom, she saw Odom with her arms cut off, stored in a garbage bag on the floor.

“This s–t is hard,'” Martin said, according to Anderson. “I never chopped up a body before, but this is, like, a meaty area and it’s giving me some trouble.”

When the cutting was done, she drove Martin to Canarsie Park twice in two nights, and helped him ditch her remains, she said.

With Roni Jacobson

“It’s like a dream. It’s like it didn’t happen,” the 61-year-old Gonzalez’s younger sister, who asked that her name be withheld, told the Daily News. “This has had a big impact on us.”

Gonzalez and his wife were riding in the Honda CR-V driven by their 21-year-old son on the Bruckner Expressway near Pelham Parkway at 5:25 a.m. Sunday when they struck a 2009 Honda Pilot driven by a drunk 51-year-old Corey Miles, cops and Gonzalez’s family said.

The collision caused the CR-V to careen into a Honda HR-V operated by a 27-year-old man, which in turn collided with a box truck helmed by a 53-year-old man, cops said.

Paramedics rushed Gonzalez and his wife to Jacobi Medical Center but only she could be saved. The couple lived in Wakefield, cops said.

The driver of the Honda HR-V was also taken to Jacobi Medical Center, along with Miles and a 49-year-old woman riding in his Pilot, cops said.

Gonzalez’s son and the box truck driver declined medical attention.

Police charged Miles with driving while intoxicated. He lives in Rockaway Beach, Queens, according to cops.

The sudden loss of Gonzalez, who acted as the family patriarch in the wake of his father’s death two years ago, has left his family in shock.

“I’m trying to understand the reality of it,” said Gonzalez’s younger brother, Agustin Gonzalez. “You don’t expect this kind of thing to happen.”

Gonzalez immigrated to the United States from the Dominican Republic in the 1980s, family said. He married his wife in 1985 and the couple fathered two sons and a daughter who gave him three grandchildren, according to his sister.

“He was so dedicated to his wife and children, his whole family,” she said.

Gonzalez worked at the same Fine Fair supermarket in Williamsbridge for more than 30 years, quickly rising from maintenance worker to manager through sheer hard work, according to his boss.

“It was just a little over a year from the time he joined as a maintenance worker and moved to being a manager,” said Carlos Collado, who owns the White Plains Road supermarket. “The number-one thing about him was how dedicated and responsible he was.”

Colleagues praised Gonzalez for his easy-going demeanor, saying he was always willing to lend an ear.

“He was a great guy, never had problems with anyone,” said 62-year-old Juan Nunez, who worked at Fine Fair with Gonzalez. “I would just go to him whenever I needed to talk.”

A devoted Catholic, Gonzalez’s sister last saw her brother at their mother’s house, where he spent many Sundays in prayer.

“I saw him last weekend, we met at my mom’s house,” she said. “He was coming to pray the rosary with my mom.”

If he wasn’t at church, Gonzalez could often be found showing his devotion to his favorite ball club in Queens.

“He was a die-hard Mets fan. He went to many games,” said brother Agustin Gonzalez. “He used to take the kids. We are Mets fans. That’s our team, you can put it that way.”

Akilo Cadogan was charged with the hit-and-run that claimed the life of Eugene Schroeder at the intersection of Morgan and Johnson Aves. on March 9, 2022, cops said.

Cadogan, 34, was driving a truck when he and Schroeder — who was in the bike lane — stopped alongside one another. The driver turned into the bicyclist and hit him at about 11:30 p.m., cops said at the time.

The victim’s husband continues to live with his grief in the home the couple shared.

“It’s a really tough day for me,” John Rappaport, 54, told the Daily News, explaining that notice of the arrest renewed his memories of Schroeder.

“The day it happened last year, he was returning from the gym after a workout. He was coming home,” Rappaport said in tears.

He said that Schroeder had moved to New York from California in 2000 and worked as a DJ in Manhattan and Brooklyn nightclubs.

Schroeder was one of many New Yorkers who started riding a bicycle during the COVID pandemic, Rappaport added.

“He didn’t ride a bike until the pandemic. After the pandemic was over, he started using his bike to go to work. He used it for everything,” the grieving man said.

Rappaport said he’d known for some time that police had identified a suspect in the crash.

“That’s the toughest part, to live with the information without justice being served.”

The two happened across each other by chance at a bar where Schroeder worked in 2006.

“I just knew then,” he said, calling Schroeder the love of his life.

“Nothing can bring him back. I have to live with this loss. I have to live with it every single day,” he added.

Cadogan started working for the DOT as a highway repairer in 2017, according to SeeThroughNY. He earned $59,821 in that capacity last year.

A DOT spokesman said Cadogan is currently on “nonactive” status and wasn’t working for the agency at the time of the hit-and-run.

The driver was held in custody Thursday after a judge set $7,500 bail in a Brooklyn court, according to city records.

The site of the funeral marked a remarkable choice. In 1989, thousands stormed the Manhattan cathedral in opposition to the Catholic Church’s policies on homosexuality, HIV/AIDS and abortion.

“Seeing all the people at the funeral services, and all the love I’ve received from people in her community all over the world, is a testament of how awesome Cecilia was,” said Gentili’s partner, Peter Scotto. “I’m so grateful for them all. She was an angel, an icon, a mother, an educator, a leader, and so much to so many people.”

Catholics have long excluded queer and transgender people, and the national conference of Catholic bishops in the U.S. rejects the concept of gender transition.

However, the Vatican announced in October the church would allow trans people to be baptized and serve as godparents under some circumstances.

“How do we articulate the gravity of this loss?” said Adam Eli, an organizer and friend of Gentili’s who helped to put together the funeral. “I do think that having the funeral there, in a space that is so historic and such a heavy-hitter, really positions her as the saint that she was.”

Gentili, a trans woman, cemented her status as a major LGBTQ+ activist through her work to improve access to gender-affirming healthcare, HIV treatment, sex workers rights, housing and immigration legal help.

Río Sofia, who lived on a shared property with Gentili and looked up to her as a mother figure, wore a red dress with flowers made of $100 bills to the funeral.

“She was an absolute icon, a revolutionary and she will live forever in our hearts,” Sofia said of Gentili.

Sofia recounted how Gentili gave her away at her wedding — to date, one of her fondest life memories.

“She gave me a gift that I never thought that I could have: A wedding to another trans person in a room full of trans people,” Sofia, a visual artist and organizer, said. “And she knew that it’s something that we deserved.”

Gentili was a Catholic who attended Catholic services, as well as Baptist services, during her life. The funeral arrangements were announced at a memorial service for the activist last week.

“There was definitely a gay gasp in the room, but in the best way possible, a very excited murmur through the crowd,” Eli said of the announcement.

Every Catholic in the Archdiocese is entitled to a Catholic funeral, said Joseph Zwilling, director of communications for the Archdiocese of New York.

Kymm Savage, 29, was also in attendance. Savage, a trans woman, migrated from Jamaica to New York with her family of four. Gentili was an inspiration and beacon of kindness and comfort as Savage was sorting out her immigration status, she said.

“She’s everything to the community in terms of who we think a savior should look like,” said Savage, a human rights activist. “And I think that’s why everyone is referring to her as a saint, because she really did show up for you. And people will remember her showing up forever and overcoming all the obstacles.”

Gentili founded Trans Equity Consulting, a New York City-based firm that offers guidance to the LGBTQ community and has a healthcare clinic at Callen Lorde, a center for LGBTQ+ healthcare. Previously, she was director of policy at Gay Men’s Health Crisis.

Gentili frequently shared her life story as she sought to empower others.

She was born in Argentina and came to the United States in 2000, seeking to to make a new start after being sexually abused throughout her childhood. Undocumented, she turned to sex work to make a living.

Gentili was homeless, addicted to heroin and was arrested repeatedly for prostitution — before accessing recovery services and eventually gaining legal status as an asylum seeker.

She released her first book in 2022 and performed an autobiographical Off-Broadway show called “Red Ink” in 2023.

Obadiah Lashley, 29, left the Brooklyn resident needing staples to close his head wounds and bruising and pain across his body, prosectors said Thursday.

Lashley was held on $50,000 bail for the Monday incident. His 26-year-old victim said he is “very exhausted” when approached at his Brooklyn home and wouldn’t say any more about the attack.

Lashley has been arrested 12 times, including once for harrassing a group of people at the St. George Staten Island ferry terminal in June of 2022, police sources said.