Mom Remembers ‘Good, Loving Kid’
December 15, 2009
By RACHEL WALDHOLZ
By all accounts, Felix Joshua DelValle was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Nineteen years old, he was a baseball fanatic who was delighted when the Yankees won the World Series. He played basketball, loved his video games, liked to read the newspaper. He spent a lot of time in and around Allentown, Pennsylvania with his mother’s family, and told relatives he wanted to move there from the Bronx and buy his mother a house.
“He was a good, loving kid,” said his mother, Jennifer Malave, 37.
But around 8:30 pm on Monday, Nov. 16, DelValle was outside the apartment building at 2000 Prospect Ave., when a gunman opened fire, hitting three people. DelValle was shot in the chest and taken to St. Barnabas Hospital, where he died within the hour, before his mother and girlfriend could reach him.
Neither DelValle’s mother nor his girlfriend, Barbara Velaquez, knew why he was at the building that night, though Velasquez said he may have been visiting friends who lived there.
FELIX JOSHUA DELVALLE WAS 19 YEARS OLD WHEN HE WAS SHOT AND KILLED OUTSIDE 2000 PROSPECT AVE. ON NOV. 16 (PHOTO: COURTESY JENNIFER MALAVE)
According to community residents, the shooter was apparently aiming for Angel Rivas, 42 (see p. 1). Phillip Carr, 17, was arrested and charged with the shooting.
An only child, DelValle lived with his mother at 787 E. 185th St. His father had never been in the picture much.
“He was my right hand man, he was my right hand hand,” said Malave.
DelValle graduated from Truman High School last year and was trying to look for a job, Malave said. He had spoken to her about joining the Navy or Air Force, and told relatives he might enlist after Christmas.
He was good with kids, said Velasquez, and he often helped out with hers. “Everybody’s kids loved him,” she said. “Everybody in my family loved him.”
The funeral, at La Paz Funeral Home on 149th Street, was packed, said his mother. “I didn’t know how many people knew my son. It was so beautiful.”
His father came to the funeral, bringing a daughter – a sister DelValle never knew he had.
Despite tremendous support from her family, Malave says every day since has been a nightmare.
“I can’t hear him call me mom – ‘Mom, can you get me a soda, Mom, can we watch a movie, Mom, let’s sit down and talk,’” she said. “All that I think about is him, him, him, him, him. It’s like a tape recorder, over and over and over.”
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