The 15-year-old Venezuelan migrant who allegedly shot a tourist then turned his gun on NYPD officers in Times Square “needs to pay,” his aunt told The Post.
“He needs to pay for it. It was an irremediable error, and whatever the judge decides is what he needs to do …There’s nothing more to do in hindsight,” Jesus Alejandro Rivas-Figueroa’s maternal aunt said.
The woman, also a Venezuelan migrant who came to the Big Apple 10 months ago, said the family was “shocked” when they learned from cops he allegedly tried to rob JD Sports on West 42nd St. — then blasted a Brazilian tourist and squeezed off two rounds at pursuing cops on Feb. 8.
Rivas-Figueroa and his mom hightailed it from the Stratford Hotel on West 70th St., where they’d been staying since September, to the aunt’s home in Yonkers within hours.
“Jesus only said there was a problem when [he and his mom] showed up, but . . . we didn’t know the magnitude of the problem until officials showed up and they told us what had happened,” recalled the woman.
His mother has been detained by immigration officials since the accused gunman was collared on Feb. 9, according to the aunt.
“We want liberty for her, because it’s not her fault what her son has done. And that they’ll give her an opportunity … to fight for her son. Whatever has happened, that’s still her son,” she said in Spanish.
On Feb. 10, a judge ordered that Rivas-Figueroa be held without bail in a juvenile detention center.
He’s been charged as an adult with attempted murder in connection to the shooting.