Three years after her son was fatally shot in the head by a jealous romantic rival, Evelin Vargas blames herself for a senseless clash with a stranger that led last week to the Bronx shooting death of her stepson.
“My heart is broken. My two sons are dead,” Vargas told the Daily News in an exclusive interview. “I think I’m cursed. I have bad luck. I don’t know if destiny is punishing me.”
On Sunday, Vargas called stepson Devonte Serrano, who she raised and calls her son, for help when she got in a tiff with a stranger who blocked her in with his bicycle as she tried to enter her local deli. The bicyclist shot Serrano dead for intervening in the spat.
Vargas said she was headed to a laundromat on Sunday afternoon to bring her nieces a cart for their clothes when she stopped at Valencia’s Deli Grocery on E. 182nd St. near Mapes Ave. across the street from her Belmont apartment, leaving the cart outside.
“I put [the cart] there so it won’t be in the way. Then I felt the guy right on the back of me,” Vargas recalled. “It was this guy and the bike. I’m like, ‘Hello, you don’t see me here? Why you blocking me?’”
The bicyclist immediately became irate.
“He’s like, ‘Oh what the f–k? What you doing there? You’re just standing there, I’m going to the store!’ He started calling me names, ‘Oh f–k out of here! What the f–k, f–king b—h,’” she said.
Alarmed, Vargas called her 29-year-old son, Serrano, who was sitting across the street in his van.
“I think it’s my fault because if I didn’t call Devonte, you know,” she said, her voice trailing off. “I should’ve walked away and not told (the bicyclist) nothing.”
Serrano came across the street and demanded an apology from the bicyclist. Instead, the angry stranger made a phone call, telling the person on the line to “bring his gun down” before taking off on his bike, Vargas said.
Serrano got back in his van while Vargas, frightened by the bicyclist’s threat to get a firearm, sought shelter inside the deli where she repeatedly called 911 but was unable to get through to an operator.
“I was scared… I poked my head out to see if he was coming. I saw the guy with the gun in his hand on the corner,” she recounted. “I was in the store. I heard two shots. I was like ‘Oh my god, Devonte, Devonte!’ I was nervous. I was calling the cops and then when I came out Devonte was on the floor.”
Serrano was struck multiple times in the chest and upper stomach about 1:45 p.m. and died at the scene, according to court documents.
Vargas said she watched a video of her son’s final moments, captured by a nearby business’ surveillance camera. The bicyclist, now armed, returned to the scene and was pedaling towards the store where Vargas was holed up.
“My son flew over there and pushed the guy off the bike,” she said, describing the video. “Then they started tussling because (the bicyclist) was going inside the store to kill me. Devonte saved me.”
Herman Gayle, 26, who turned himself in at a Harlem NYPD precinct stationhouse hours after fleeing the scene, is charged with murder and gun possession. He was ordered held without bail when he was arraigned in Bronx Criminal Court Monday.
The suspect’s mother, Morvel Dennis, 54, who lives in Harlem, says she got a call from her son shortly after the incident. She encouraged him to turn himself in but he insisted on coming to her first.
“I spoke to him about just doing it where he is. He said, ‘No mommy, I want you to take me in,’” she told the Daily News. “He just came to the door. I saw him and I took him to the station and that’s it.”
She said that on the advice of her lawyer she didn’t question her son about what happened.
“At this point I really don’t know what to say,” she said. “It’s fresh. It just started. We just have to wait until the evidence comes in before we can even say anything.”
The suspect’s grandmother, Carris Owens, 83, was shocked by her grandson’s arrest.
“Whatever happened, there is a kid that respects me highly,” she said of Gayle. “I’m really grieving about this situation and I’m really shocked.”
But the victim’s parents have no sympathy for the suspect.
“He couldn’t fight my son — he had to go get a gun,” Vargas said. “You’re a coward. You’re disgusting. I want him to rot in jail.”
Serrano’s father, Braulio Serrano, agreed.
“ I don’t wish anybody bad but he should’ve handled it differently,” Serrano, 55, said. “That’s the state the world is in right now. Everybody just wants to react. Everybody is an animal.”
Vargas said she can’t help but feel she’s partly to blame for Serrano’s death.
Vargas said she always depended on Serrano, who she raised since he immigrated from Jamaica with his father at age 6. She described him as a loving, intelligent man, who enjoyed riding bikes, listening to music, and playing dominoes and chess.
“Devonte used to do everything for me. Everything. Everything. Not only for me, for his sister, his aunt, everybody here,” she said of residents on her block. “He used to help everybody with their bags. If somebody needed a parking spot or whatever, Devonte was there. Devonte was the best.”
The devastated mother said the loss feels all too familiar, having lost her son Justin Moncada to gun violence.
“Justin was my best friend. We used to talk about anything. Just like me and Devonte,” Vargas said, breaking down crying. “They were my best friends. They used to call me ‘Mommy.’”
On Dec. 18, 2021, Moncada, 30, was fatally shot by his girlfriend’s ex in her Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, home after the former boyfriend climbed through a window wearing a black ski mask and confronted Moncada.
Adam Thomas, 31, opened fire at a door while Moncada stood behind it, blasting 16 times around 12:15 a.m. One of the bullets hit Moncada in the head, killing him.
Thomas then pointed his gun at Moncada’s girlfriend and the 6-year-old girl she shared with the victim, screaming that the woman was to blame because she chose Moncada over him, according to the Brooklyn district attorney’s office.
“Losing him broke me,” Vargas said, tearing up. “His daughter was there too and [Thomas] told his daughter, ‘I killed your fu–ing father.’ Can you believe that?”
After pleading guilty to murder, Thomas was sentenced in February to 18 years to life in prison.
Vargas said Serrano and Moncada grew up together as stepbrothers and remained close even when Moncada moved to Brooklyn.
“He was hurt,” she said of Serrano’s reaction to Moncada’s death.
Moncada’s daughter clung to Serrano in the wake of her father’s death. Now she’s left without an uncle too while Vargas has no surviving sons.
“It keeps happening every day,” Vargas said of gun violence in the city. “I’m scared of losing my two daughters. I don’t want to go out. I don’t want them to leave my side.”
With Colin Mixson
