A petty criminal was charged with the murder of a Bronx toddler on Easter Sunday after witnesses fingered him in a police lineup as the hothead who fired the lethal bullet.
Under massive police security, somber witnesses were shuttled into the Bronx homicide squad on Simpson Street where accused gunman Nicholas Morris, 26, had been held since he surrendered to cops on Monday.
The unshaken ex-con was led away in handcuffs around 4 p.m. yesterday on charges of second-degree murder, manslaughter and criminal possession of a weapon.
Throngs of passers-by lined the building’s perimeter awaiting a glimpse of the alleged killer. He shuffled away slowly with a stone face as the angry crowd jeered, “Coward!”
“No matter where he is at, his guilt and his conscience will eat him alive,” vowed the slain boy’s mom, Joanne Sanabria.
Wearing a T-shirt bearing an image of her slain 2-year-old son, David Pacheco Jr., the stoic mom said, “My baby’s getting justice. Every time he goes to sleep, every time he wakes up, he faces reality. I don’t want to face reality but I have to,” she added.
“My son lives on inside me. The same way he lived inside of me for nine months. My son is an angel.”
Police are hunting Morris’ alleged accomplice, 300-pound Ronell “Burger” Gilliam, 25.
Police sources said the senseless shooting stemmed from a street dispute that began when Morris and Gilliam, who both have a history of drug arrests, got a “hard look” from another man.
They got into a fight, and were spat upon and insulted by the stranger’s three friends. That apparent humiliation whipped the suspects into a fury and the pair went to Gilliam’s home for a 9 mm pistol, the sources said.
They returned to the scene, where Morris allegedly squeezed off five rounds diagonally across the intersection of West Tremont and Harrison avenues as the men fled.
A bullet pierced the side door of a passing minivan where little David – in his Easter finest – was in a child’s safety seat.
Some 200 people gathered last night at the scene of the shooting for a candlelight vigil.
“If you have any morals left, turn yourself in,” Diane Sanabria, the slain boy’s aunt, said. “If you don’t, may all the guilt that’s inside you take you to the grave.”