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Bushwick Teen Killed by Police Was Shot 14 Times, Medical Examiner Says

By Gwynne Hogan | February 20, 2017 2:55pm | Updated on February 20, 2017 7:00pm
 Police shot Sergio Reyes, 18, multiple times on Sunday morning at 12:40 a.m., officials said.
Sergio Reyes
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BUSHWICK — The high school senior who was killed by police officers after allegedly holding up a Bushwick bodega with a fake gun was shot 14 times, according to the city Medical Examiner's office.

Sergio Reyes, 18, who police said robbed Garden Deli, at 185 Starr St. — a few blocks from his Wilson Avenue home had gunshot wounds to his torso, limbs, heart, lungs, aorta, spinal cord, liver, stomach and bones, said spokeswoman Julie Bolcer Monday night. The shooting was ruled a homicide.

The teen's mother Patricia Reyes, 48, said she and her husband had rushed to the hospital after the 12:40 a.m. shooting Sunday but her son was already dead.

"He couldn't withstand [the] gunshots," she said through tears Monday.

The NYPD said he pointed what looked like a real gun at the store clerk and took a six-pack of Corona and a six-pack of Heineken.

Police responding to the robbery saw Reyes walking west on Starr Street and confronted him, but he still had the fake pistol in his hand and raised it towards officers, NYPD officials said.

Patricia Reyes, a house cleaner in South Williamsburg, and her husband, a flower seller, who've lived in Bushwick for more than a decade, were struggling to make sense of what happened to their son. 

"I don't understand why they did this," Patricia Reyes, who emigrated from Puebla, Mexico, said in Spanish.

"He had a gunshot wound in his chest. It was a shot to kill him."

Police would not confirm the number of times Reyes had been shot, saying only that the investigation was ongoing.

Patricia Reyes, who had six sons with Reyes being the fourth oldest, remembered the last conversation she'd had with him.

"He asked me what I was going to cook," Patricia Reyes recalled. "I'm going to cook something good for you," she'd replied, later heading out to buy supplies to make mole poblano.

She also bought her son a new white shirt, she said. When she got back, he tried it on.

"Hey Mami, how do I look?" he'd said.

"I'm going to go out a bit to walk around," he said, leaving the house wearing the shirt his mother had bought him, she said.

"Those words, I'll never forget," she said, between sobs. "I never saw him again.

"I don't know where he got [the fake gun]. I clean his room, I've never found a single gun or a knife, nothing."

Her son liked playing handball and was hoping to study social work in college, she said. He would have graduated from Leadership and Public Service High School at the end of this school year.

"I don't know why this happened," Patricia Reyes said. "It hurts so much."

A funeral service will be held Wednesday at Ortiz Funeral Home at 201 Havemeyer St. in Williamsburg from 4 to 9 p.m.

EDITOR'S NOTE: An earlier version of this story stated Sergio Reyes was shot nine times according to what Reyes mother learned at the hospital. But the Medical Examiner's office later confirmed he'd been shot 14 times. The story has been updated to reflect that.