WEST HARLEM — Ronnie Ryan endured every mother’s worst nightmare in 2009 when one of her sons was shot dead.
Nearly four years to the day, it happened again.
Ryan’s youngest son, Tyreke Taylor, 35, was gunned down inside a United Fried Chicken and Pizza on 146th Street and Adam Clayton Powell Boulevard early Tuesday morning, police said. He was pronounced dead on the scene. The murder came four years after Ryan's older son, Walter Taylor, 37, was fatally shot the day before Father's Day in 2009, relatives said.
Walter Taylor was shot at 129th Street and Lenox Avenue at 4:30 a.m. on June 20, according to reports at the time. No one was arrested in the elder Taylor's death, relatives said.
“I haven’t even gotten closure from my first son being murdered,” Ryan, 68, said noting Walter's killing remains unsolved. “I just put it in God’s hands.”
Relatives said Tyreke Taylor was out with friends Monday night when he got into an argument with a group inside the fast-food spot. One of the men shot Taylor in the neck and fled, cops said.
Brandi Taylor, Tyreke’s sister, remembered her brother as a passionate outdoorsman who was devoted to his two daughters, aged 16 and 5, and 14-year-old son.
“He liked to go to the woods, fish, jet ski, that type of stuff,” she said. “But his kids meant everything to him. He loved them.”
Ryan pleaded for restraint over revenge.
“When I was growing up, it was just fistfights,” she said. “Now people use guns like it’s nothing."
