Her beloved 15-year-old son was shot dead on a Harlem sidewalk last summer when a 13-year-old coward pulled the trigger five times on a .38-caliber revolver.
Still, when sobbing Bronx public-school teacher Jacqueline Birkett-Johnson heard the handcuffs click shut on her son’s killer at an emotional sentencing yesterday, she asked a Manhattan judge: “Can I hug him? Please?”
She begged as the murderer was led away by unaccommodating court officers, even over a plea of “Please! Hug!” from the boy’s own weeping mother. With court rules barring such contact, the two mothers made due with hugging each other, their bodies shaking with grief.
It was a poignant end to an unusual sentencing in which the victim’s family told their son’s killer they forgave him.
“I have seen the best of humanity in this courtroom today,” noted the visibly moved judge, Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Michael Corriero, as the tragic case against L’mani Delima concluded.
Delima, now 14, will serve eight years to life in prison for the coldblooded, June 2005 execution of 15-year-old Phoenix Garrett.
The confrontation was likely sparked by little more than Garrett accidentally bumping into Delima and his three friends as they passed each other at 145th Street and Broadway.
Garrett was beaten and tried to run away. But Delima followed him around the corner. “He emptied the entirety of that gun into Phoenix Garrett,” prosecutor Amy Hare said. “The fatal shot was to his back.”
Speaking at the sentencing, Birkett-Johnson told the killer, “L’mani, I’m begging you. Please look at me. I’m talking to you. I’m not angry at you.”
As he looked up sadly, she said, “In order for me to heal, I have to forgive you.”