WHERE were you when the bullets flew?
The Mother of the Year dashed from a Town Car to her front door, stopping to struggle with a broken lock. “Damn!”
At 37, Zelita Mighty has produced The Bronx’s pride and joy, 16-year-old Carvett Gentles. A lad who earned his full measure of street cred by allegedly incompetently firing a bullet that cops say plunged into the head of an innocent 15-year-old girl.
“Damn!” Zelita cursed, as she scurried inside and ordered me to get lost.
Before I do, Zelita, I have a question. For you and for all moms raising sons in tough neighborhoods, where excuses for criminal behavior run as thick as sewer rats.
Where were the parents?
Where were you the day your son changed from a snot-nosed schoolboy who might have dreamed of becoming president, and turned into a defendant in a case of attempted murder? Where were you when someone slipped your boy a pistol, which he told cops he used to shoot another gang banger in the shoulder, and poor Vada Vasquez into a coma?
Zelita — big surprise! — wasn’t much of a mother. She told The Post’s Denise Buffa that she’d long ago lost her boy to his felonious older cousins. Carvett disappeared for long periods from her sight.
It seems she was too busy satisfying her own desires to pay attention to what was happening under her roof.
“People on the street, they tell me he said he was scared,” she says now. “And nobody tell me nothing.”
And dads? Around here, real dads are harder to come by than gold bullion.
Zelita was absent for much of Carvett’s young years, leaving him in Queens at age 6 as she moved to The Bronx to hook up with a husband. Carvett moved in with Mom as a teen, but he clashed with her new man, relatives said.
So to whom do you think the mother chose to give her allegiance? Her own flesh and blood, or her own miserable self? The answer is all too common.
We are raising a generation of tyrannical brats, kids who don’t know the meaning of “no.” The only difference between the spawn of Zelita Mighty and that of a clubgoing Hollywood starlet or divorced suburban mom is the size of the bank account. Suri Cruise goes out in high heels at age 3. Lindsay Lohan passes out in public. Mothers switch partners on a whim, leaving kids to the nanny. Or to the streets. And then, we’re shocked when the kids turn to drugs. Or worse.
Carvett Gentles was raised, if you can call it that, by Rohan Francis, an uncle of 18 with a criminal record under his belt. A great role model for a budding punk.
The Jefferson Place cul-de-sac on which Gentles lived is known as a war zone for the Bloods, a gang whose name is scrawled chillingly on the landing outside the boy’s apartment as a singular noun: Blood.
Here, Gentles, nicknamed “Young ‘Un” by members of an offshoot gang, Gorilla Bloods, was sent on his treacherous life’s path by an uncle and cousins who hung out in full view of parents, playing with illegal guns as if they were plastic toys.
“He was always out here, showing off with his friends,” said next-door neighbor Cassandra Hernandez, 13, pointing to the front step.
“He smokes weed. He’s crazy. They go around fighting people and stuff like that.”
And his folks? “His parents let him do whatever he wanted,” Cassandra said. Suddenly, Cassandra’s voice was drowned out by a cousin of Gentles, who stopped by to enjoy some free attention.
“They’re always locking somebody up,” declared Davon Lawless. “He’s an innocent kid!” he said, sounding exactly like Gentles’ cousin, Cleve Smith, who cried on his way to jail, “I ain’t do s – – -!”
There do exist real fathers. Take Federico Grullon. He won’t allow his three kids to leave the house.
“No friends. You go to school to get your work done, then come home,” he said.
“That’s the way it is.”
For such a small word, “no” is so hard to say.
It is when parents go missing. Or when they’re too selfish or spoiled to just say “no” — to themselves.
Here’s the TRUTH, Maureen
Here’s one story Maureen Dowd won’t report in the New York Times.
A groundbreaking study suggests that priests molest young boys at a rate no higher than that of the general population. That’s according to researchers at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, who were asked to address the myth of the Catholic Church as a garden of hedonism. Abuse has also declined dramatically since at least the 1980s, they found, as the church, perhaps belatedly, deals with it.
What’s more, closeted gay priests are not the problem. The study, due next year, will show that boys have been more often victims only because they outnumber girls in the church.
The research was funded partly by Catholic bishops, but the US Department of Justice threw in bucks, because it wants to know the truth. Which is more than I can say for some reporters.
Mag goes off the Depp end
If Johnny Depp is the Sexiest Man Alive, I’m swearing off men.
The man who told this newspaper he’s so “frightened” of America, he would never raise his daughter here, is, for the second time, People magazine’s title pick. Of course, Depp has never said a word about refusing our money.
I’m actually getting immune to Hollywood dim bulbs who trash America while sucking up fame and adulation. But I can’t abide that ratty goatee of which Depp is so fond. I wish that People would, for once, pick a real man with testosterone coursing through his body to honor as the world’s sexiest creation.
Oh, right. People is choosing from the woefully shallow pool of Hollywood he-men, isn’t it? Never mind.
THESE ARE MAZEL TOUGH TIMES
Thing are bad all over.
A kosher soup kitchen is set to open, unimaginably, in the middle of black-hatted Williamsburg to feed hundreds of newly hungry Jews.
In Scarsdale, a Jewish man laid off from a six-figure job is desperately seeking financial assistance before he loses his property. Maybe his family.
The recession has hit hard a community not normally associated with want. Jewish folk, some of whom live in five-bedroom houses, now face foreclosure, but they’re too proud or embarrassed to beg.
So — shhh! — The United Jewish Appeal has started Connect to Care, which already has given more than 8,000 needy Jews financial services, job help and mental-health counseling to get through unfamiliar territory.
Just don’t expect anyone to admit it.
The ‘last’ of Oprah
Oprah Winfrey, who has sold more books, diet products and US presidents than any human, dead or alive, is set to give up her TV show. The planet heaves a collective sigh.
Who will replace her as queen?
A better question: Do we need another one?