Mom of man killed execution-style in Queens pleads with Mayor Adams to ‘fix the city’
The mother of a young stage actor and teacher who was gunned down execution-style in Queens implored Mayor Eric Adams on Thursday to finally “fix the city.”
“Something has to be done,” grieving mom Joycelyn Dodds Panthier told The Post, after losing her 26-year-old son, Peter Panthier, in a brutal point-blank shooting that was caught on camera Saturday.
“Fix the city! Hold people accountable for their actions. Children are dying,” she said of her son who had only recently moved to the Big Apple.
The mom agreed to pass her number on to Hizzoner so she could raise her fears in person. A spokesman agreed to pass on the request.
“My son was good,” the mom said, proudly recalling how he had previously taught high school math and also performed in several plays at the national theater in his native Dominica.
Her appeal came after the NYPD released chilling footage of Panthier ‘s murder in Far Rockaway as part of an ongoing hunt for the cold-blooded killer.
It showed Panthier and his killer — dressed almost identically in light-colored hoodies — initially strolling together, seemingly amiably, near 624 Grassmere Terrace at about 8:10 p.m. Saturday.
The other man then suddenly pulled a handgun, holding it right up to his victim’s left temple — with a flash catching the fatal shot.
Panthier immediately stiffened and toppled to the ground, and was pronounced dead at St. John’s Episcopal Hospital, police said.
He had only recently moved to Brooklyn with his family and was a loner who didn’t appear to have many friends, his mom said.
“I don’t recognize the person in the video,” she said.
When his parents moved to East New York about 18 months ago from their native Dominica, a Caribbean island of only around 70,000 people, Panthier initially stayed in Trinidad and Tobago where he was studying economics at St Augustine College, his mom said.
“He’s really super intelligent. He tested super high on his IQ. Einstein levels,” she said of her son, who was also an actor and musician who wrote his own songs.
But he struggled with depression and they begged him to join them in the Big Apple, she said.
“He was suffering from depression so badly that he didn’t finish his studies. We just asked him to come home,” she said.
Her appeal to Adams comes after a flurry of other victims have warned of the ongoing scourge of crime in the city.
On Wednesday, the hero father and son who were stabbed while fighting off knife-wielding muggers robbing an elderly woman near their Queens pizza shop also complained about growing lawlessness.
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“People have to protect themselves, because the government is not doing it,” Cazim Suljovic, 68, told The Post from his bed at Elmhurst Hospital, where he’s recovering from a punctured lung and nine stab wounds.
