By Nikhil Kumar KS
Lydia Blas was going out to vote yesterday and so she pulled a black t-shirt from her drawer onto herself. Then she learned of son’s death. Today, still sitting in the same black t-shirt in her Williamsburg home, she slaps her forehead and cries for having chosen what she believes to be an inauspicious color. She knew it was going to be a dark day.
Lydia and Harry Blas, the parents of the brazenly slain Ramon Blas, are still struggling to come to terms with their loss, their second of this kind – their son Robert was also killed in a shooting in 2001.
Ramon Blas, 39, visited his parents on Tuesday morning. Later that afternoon he was shot while driving his car on Lorimer Street in an alleged road rage incident, just a block from his parents’ house. Hiram Silva, 35, a close friend, was in the store outside which Blas succumbed to the gunshot in a UPS delivery truck. Blas had jumped into the truck in an attempt to evade further gunfire, but to no avail. He was pronounced dead on arrival at Woodhull Hospital.
“Ramon was a very private person,” said his mother. He never brought his girlfriend over to his parents’ house. The family suspects his girlfriend is pregnant with his child but they aren’t sure. Another media report claims that Blas was indeed going to be a father according to his girlfriend, who was not identified. The report also says that they were going to get married soon.
Blas was born in Puerto Rico. He came to Brooklyn when he was 5 with his family and grew up here. He used to work in a store on Grand Street until it closed down. He had a criminal record and had done jail time for robbery. He was released on parole till 2012, three years ago according to Silva. “He was trying to change. He was happy, especially this last week, because he was going to Puerto Rico with his girlfriend,” said Silva.
Harry Blas went to retrieve some of Ramon’s belongings from his son’s apartment. But apparently it had already been ransacked by the time they reached the scene.
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