An elderly man known as the “grandpa” of his neighborhood was killed Thursday just yards away from his Bronx home after getting hit by a stray bullet, cops and sources said.

Edgar Spence, 76, was sitting on an outside bench around 10:30 p.m., only doors down from his Mott Haven home, when the shot ripped through his torso, police said Friday.

The beloved neighborhood staple was rushed to a nearby hospital, where he succumbed to his injuries.

“We lost a good soul,” Spence’s friend Harriet Hayward told The Post.

She described Spence as a “grandpa to everybody,” and said the park area outside the block was dubbed “the senior citizen center,” because older residents came out there to play cards. 

“We was just playing cards over here the other day and talking about how he gonna get out the chair and dance at my sister’s wedding,” Hayward said.

A mobility scooter believed to belong to the victim was left outside the NYCHA Mitchel Houses on Thursday as mourning neighbors and loved ones grappled with the violence.

Investigators do not believe Spence was intentionally targeted in the shooting, sources said. No suspect has yet been named in connection to the case.

Neighbors said the elderly man was simply enjoying the late-night spring weather when he was killed.

He was spending time with at least one other man who witnessed the bloodshed, but who was too traumatized to speak about the incident.

“Yesterday was the first, like, real hot day. 
So they all came out. They was just listening to music, and then from what I heard, that’s when they started shooting,” the friend, who gave her name only as L. Brandon, told The Post.

“My dad was out here, he was like, right there with him,” she added. “He hasn’t even been talking to the family. He is traumatized, it’s a very scary situation that unfortunately, ended fatally for someone that we all love.”

Multiple locals described Spence as the community’s “grandpa,” with some saying he was loved by neighbors, young and old.

“Everybody knew him from the little kids on up. Little kids called him grandpa,” friend James Harrison told The Post.

“The little kids are going to miss him. He always gave them money to get their ice creams,” he added, before calling on the killer to surrender.

“Please stop. Turn yourself in or whatever, please come forward,” he said, before referring to last week’s heartbreaking murder of little Kaori Patterson-Moore, who was in her stroller when she was struck by a stray bullet in Williamsburg

“It just happened to the seven-month-old baby girl. Now it happened to him,” he said.

The tragic shooting comes just weeks after a young man was gunned down, also in the South Bronx, following a years-long feud with his elderly neighbor, according to authorities.

Gilbert Smalls, 76, was arrested after admitting to gunning down 21-year-old Justin Chatfield following a dispute in their Morris Heights apartment building on April 2, cops and sources said.

Weeks earlier, 27-year-old Jayvontae Simmons was slain execution-style inside a South Bronx housing project, with no suspects identified.

Simmons is believed to have been targeted in the shooting on the morning of March 6 inside the Forest Houses NYCHA building on East 165th Street in Morrisania, where he lived, according to police and law enforcement sources.

Despite this, major crime in the Bronx was down 9.4% in the first quarter of 2026 compared with 2025, the biggest drop of any borough, according to official NYPD figures.

The city saw a record low of 54 murders in the first three months of 2026, beating the previous all-time low of 60 murders set in 2018.

Major crime also declined 5.3% citywide, with a joint lowest number of 139 shooting incidents in the first quarter, tied with 2025.