A teen was fatally stabbed in broad daylight on a Brooklyn street corner — and stumbled gushing blood into a nearby restaurant while the alleged killer passed the murder weapon to his mom, police sources and witnesses said Tuesday.
Rohan Burke, 17, was knifed in the chest shortly after 4 p.m. Monday at the corner of East 17th Street and Avenue M in Midwood roughly two miles from his home, police said.
Rohan BurkeCops say Burke and 17-year-old suspect David Lopez, who is wanted by police but remains at-large, were seen squabbling nearby before the Lopez suddenly plunged a blade into the victim.
Surveillance footage recovered shared with The Post shows Lopez then pass the weapon off to his mother, identified by cops as Barbara Gollaza, as he fled the scene, police sources said.
“She was seen taking the knife from her son,” the source said.
Cops took the woman in for questioning, but she was not immediately charged, authorities said.
Gollaza, who was eating at the time at a restaurant on the same corner where the stabbing went down, ran outside to meet Lopez after receiving a phone call on her cell, the sources said.
As Lopez was allegedly ditching the weapon, a mortally wounded Burke was “screaming to everybody: ‘Yo! Call 911! Call 911,’” recalled witness Yasir Butt, 41, an area halal cart vendor.
“I was working when I heard someone running,” Butt said. “He had his hand over his chest. He was bleeding. There was a lot of blood.”
Then Burke staggered into the Pizza Gyro Grill across the street on Avenue M.
“He ran inside here,” worker Ayhan Persin, 65, said. “He started screaming, ‘Call 911! Call 911, please!”
Cops investigate the scene where a teen was fatally stabbed in broad daylight in Brooklyn.Mark Mellone“He was bleeding from the right side of his chest,” Persin said. “He had his left hand on his chest and he had his phone in his right hand.”
Burke then fell, Persin said, adding, “He just slumped down on the chair.”
“He took off his hoodie and his T-shirt. The blood was just squirting out all over the place. His eyes rolled over and turned white,” said Persin.
Persin said he quickly called 911 because he thought the teen “was going to die.”
“All I heard [Burke] say was, ‘Don’t do it, I don’t like…’” before the victim trailed off.
“He couldn’t talk anymore,” said Persin.
When police arrived on the scene Persin “gave them 10, 20 towels,” he said.
“They held the towel to his chest and was pressing it to his chest to stop the bleeding,” the worker recalled. “It didn’t stop.”
“I was scared,” Persin said. “I thought he was going to die in here.”
Medics then rushed Burke to Maimonides Medical Center where he was conscious and alert before going into surgery, police said.
Burke later died from his injuries at 1 a.m. Tuesday, according to sources.
Police are seeking two to three possible male suspects in the stabbing, cops said.
Burke’s devastated parents on Tuesday pleaded for the killer to turn himself.
“He was such a good kid. He was a good boy. He didn’t deserve to die the way he died…He was stabbed for no reason,” Burke’s tearful mom, Tracey Beckles, 48, said outside of the family’s Flatland home.
“Someone is out there who knows what happened to my son and I would like them to please come forward and tell if you know who did it or if you did it, please give yourself up.”
Beckles said her son loved basketball and video games had aspirations of being a lawyer.
“He was a respectable kid,” the mom said.
Burke’s heartbroken father, Kevin Burke, 55, called his son “a very good kid.”
“It’s so sad that someone just took him away from us for no apparent reason,” he said.
Police sources say Burke was a student at Lafayette High School in Bensonhurst, but that he was frequently skipped class and was classified as “long-term absent.”
Additional reporting by Paul Martinka



