The NYPD sergeant who desperately tried to save the life of a shot Brooklyn toddler was called upon to eulogize the murdered child at her funeral yesterday.
“She’s somewhere we all want to go,” said Sgt. Timothy Carleto of 3-year-old Tajmere Clark, whom he frantically carried from the shooting that claimed her life Sunday. “We’re all striving – but she’s there already.”
Carleto was called to the front of the Victory Temple Church of God in Bedford-Stuyvesant by the Rev. Jerry Smalls, Tajmere’s grand-uncle, who presided over the service.
“I grew up not respecting police because I thought they were an occupying force,” Smalls said. “But I thank God today for every police officer that puts on a uniform.”
Carleto had been sitting with his partner, Officer David Canonico, in the back of the church, accepting praise and thanks from many of the mourners who had seen the sergeant’s heroic efforts in a heartbreaking front-page photo in Monday’s Post.
“I looked at the paper and I saw the agony of [Sgt.] Carleto,” Smalls said during the service. “We have a very special thanks to Sgt. Carleto.”
Tajmere, who lay in a casket dressed in a white gown with a pink bow adorning her upturned sailor’s cap, was recalled as a beautiful, happy and fun-loving child eagerly awaiting the start of school.
Many of the more than 100 mourners broke down into tears at the sight of young Tajmere who lay with her beloved SpongeBob SquarePants doll by her side.
At the end of the 90-minute ceremony, Tajmere’s mother, Natasha Clark-Smalls, took a last look at the casket before she collapsed into wailing, convulsive sobs.
Tajmere was later buried in Cypress Hills Cemetery.
The tot was gunned down Sunday morning at a birthday party for her aunt’s boyfriend, General Lee “Bubba” Waiters.
A drunken Waiters, 36, allegedly snapped and fired onto an apartment full of people. He was in a rage because his girlfriend, Jacqueline Warren, criticized him for his nonstop drinking from the night before.
As he was about to leave apartment, he allegedly spun around, opening fire with a .357 magnum revolver, hitting four people. Shot were Warren’s daughter, Shatashia Lewis, 14; her son, Lorenzo Warren, 23, Tajmere; and the girl’s grandmother, Mary Lee Clark, 51, who made a heroic effort to pull the girl from danger.
The elder Clark was hit in her eye and torso and remains in the hospital.
The wounded Lorenzo and his 18-year-old brother Derek were able to subdue the drunken madman by smashing his head into a 20-gallon fish tank.
Waiters remains in Kings Count Hospital with head injuries.
Charges of murder, attempted murder and weapons possession were taken to a grand jury and an indictment has been handed down, sources said. But with Waiters in the hospital, the indictment will remain sealed until he’s well enough to be brought to court.