The distraught dad of a 16-year-old boy who was shot and killed during a wild teen brawl in the Bronx Wednesday night said he wants the gun-toting thugs who took his son’s life to be held accountable.
“I don’t forgive,” Bryan Corley, whose son, Christopher Redding, was gunned down in the Kingsbridge melee, told The Post through tears. “I want to see them off the street. They are walking around as if there are no consequences, no repercussions for their actions.
“Parents have to be held accountable more,” said Corley, 47. “Why should I tell the kid to turn himself in when the parents should be the ones doing it? If you don’t, then you are condoning it. If there was a law where the parents and children split the sentence, the shooting would go down.”
Bryan Corley speaks about the senseless Bronx shooting death of his son, Christopher Redding, 16. ABC7
Police said one teen was killed and two were wounded during a brawl in the Bronx Wednesday. Peter Gerber
Redding, a freshman at John F. Kennedy High School and a promising football player, tried to pull a friend to safety after the fight broke out at Broadway and West 238th Street shortly after 5 p.m., his father said.
“What we hear is that there was an altercation inside the McDonald’s with one of his female friends and an older lady who had a young child with her,” Corley said. “The lady called the guys. They were antagonizing her. The girl called my son, Christopher. He got over there and separated them.
“As he was walking away with the girl, the kid pulled out a gun and started shooting.”
Bryan Corley said the Bronx brawl that cost his teen son his life stemmed from a dispute at a local McDonald’s. Kyle Mazza
Redding was shot in the back and mortally wounded while two others — a 15-year-old boy and a 13-year-old girl — were hit in the legs and listed in stable condition at St. Barnabas Hospital, cops said.
On Thursday, the NYPD released surveillance photos of four people sought in the deadly shooting — three males all wearing black clothing and one female wearing a black jacket and a blue mask.
“I feel hurt,” Corley said, fighting back tears. “I’m going to miss him a whole lot, believe me. I feel like my heart has been ripped out of my chest. My whole world just fell apart. I do not know how we are going to pick up from here. It’s like the main key to paradise. He was so good, so full of life.
“He was very helpful,” he said of his son, one of four siblings. “He stuck up to bullies.”
Christopher Redding, 16, was a high school freshman and a promising football player, his father said. ABC7
The NYPD on Thursday released surveillance images of the four suspects in the deadly Wednesday shooting. Kyle Mazza
Corley said his advice to the gun-toting teens who are terrorizing the Big Apple is to “find God.
“As long as this generation of kids don’t know a higher power, we are gonna have more of this and it’s going to get even worse,” he said.
The tragic shooting has been particularly hard on the slain teen’s mother.
“She’s too distraught to talk,” he said. “She can’t eat, she can’t sleep. We are still processing this and hoping this is a dream. Things are never going to be the same.”
Police urged anyone with information on the suspects to contact the NYPD Crime Stoppers Hotline at 1-800-577-TIPS or at crimestoppers.nypdonline.org.
Additional reporting by Amanda Woods