Widow of slain Bronx man recalls his final minutes of life: ‘I didn’t want him to go away’

The wife of a Bronx man killed in gruesome fashion recalled her desperate rush to her dying spouse’s side as he lay bleeding on the street near their home.

Imani Nuri Hinton received a phone call from her husband Cortez Hinton after he was shot twice on Oct. 15, with police charging one of the teenage suspects then drove his car over the helpless victim before speeding off.

“He called me and said, ‘Mommy, I got shot,’” the wife told the Daily News. “And I was like, ‘What?’ I ran out from the fifth floor, all the way down … I came and he was on the ground and I had to like, you know, I had to help him. With his blood on my hands.”

The 33-year-old victim, shot in the groin and the torso, was pronounced dead at Lincoln Hospital.

“He told me to hurry,” his wife recalled. “That was the last thing he said to me: ‘Hurry.’ And I said, ‘I’m coming’ … No one deserves to die like that.”

Police arrested the alleged 17-year-old gunman Thursday for murder, assault and weapons possession, with his name withheld due to his age. Driver Jovant Erazo, 19, was busted last month for running over the victim “not once, not twice, not three times, but four times,” Bronx prosecutors charged.

Authorities were still searching for two fugitive passengers inside the car when Hinton was killed, and the wife said she had no idea what provoked the deadly attack.

The Daily News Flash

Weekdays

Catch up on the day’s top five stories every weekday afternoon.

“Everybody loved him,” she insisted. “Everyone knew who he was. So it’s like hard to believe had had any type of enemies … He was a family man.”

Nuri Hinton offered fond memories of her husband, killed four years after their marriage. She described the cable technician and former Amazon worker as an upbeat family man who shared a close relationship with his step-daughter.

“Always smiling, always laughing,” she said of her slain spouse. “He’s giving. He’s always trying to do something for somebody, like whoever needs help. He was like a role model to the younger kids outside.”

The hard-working Hinton was walking along Kelly St. in the Foxwood section of the borough when shot around 8:10 a.m. His spouse said she was forced to temporarily relocate from their home after his death because she remains scared about what happened.

“I can’t even be in the area because of this situation,” she said. “I had to change my whole life. I don’t walk by the spot, but I think about it. I’m not even ready for that.”

The wife said she forgave the killers but offered them little sympathy.

“You’re not going to have a life … and my husband is gone forever,” she said. “That was my life. They took my life away from me. And you’re going to have to life with that. It’s not going to be a good life for you.”