Friends and family gathered to pay respects yesterday at the funeral of an aspiring rapper gunned down outside a Chelsea nightclub and to console his devastated mother – whose other son was left paralyzed in the shooting.
As Gustavo Cuadros, 25, lay in a slate gray coffin at St. Anthony’s of Padua Church in his hometown, of Red Bank, N.J., his grieving mother, Beatriz Cuadros, had to be held up by two of her other sons as she wept.
“My mom and him were very tight. She relied on him,” said the youngest Cuadros brother, Rodolfo, 22. “He had visions of being successful for her. He promised that he would take her to Brazil. That was one of her dreams.”
Her other son, Julian Andres Cuadros, 28, lies paralyzed in critical condition at St. Vincent’s Hospital in Manhattan.
“We are so sad, because we lost him while he was only 25 years old,” said the Rev. Pedro Bou in a Spanish-language Mass. “It’s hard to fill the void.”
The Cuadros brothers were gunned down on Tuesday night outside Opus 22, when the bouncer, Stephen Sakai, allegedly opened fire after getting into a fight with one of their friends.
That friend, Ian Davis, 21, was shot in the leg. He attended the funeral hobbling on a cane. Another friend, Yeison Correa, 23, was shot in the back, and also remains hospitalized at St. Vincent’s.
“This doesn’t just take one life. He ruins so many lives,” Rodolfo Cuadros said of the psycho shooter. “He took his gun out and started shooting and he didn’t stop. He didn’t have a heart to stop.”