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.

The store outside which Ramon Blas was shot and killed on Lorimer Street, Williamsburg on Tuesday afternoon. Photo: Nikhil Kumar/Brooklyn Ink.

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.

People waiting in an Emergency Room. Photo courtesy of Paul Beaty / AP

Unless you arrive in an ambulance, you reach Kingsbrook Jewish Medical Center’s Emergency Room through a labyrinth of corridor. Four people lie in stretchers that are visible from the available seating in the ER. The first one is Jessica. She is wearing a headscarf. She is fast asleep. Several empty stretchers line the corridor to the right. Doctors hurry through the waiting area. The ambience is eerie with whirring machines coupled with emotionless announcements for doctors. Jessica awakes and props herself up against the pillows.

An older woman with blood-shot eyes is the sole incumbent of the seats in the corridor. She is Jessica’s mother. “What are they saying?” she asks Jessica after a nurse had whispers something into the latter’s ear. She walks up to her stretcher and the two speak in hushed tones. She sits back down in a bit.

The mother’s phone breaks the eeriness with a hip-hop ringer. It’s a short call. She pops some gum into her mouth and counts the change in her wallet. She walks back to the stretcher and more discussion ensues. Jessica helps herself to water on a tray attached to her stretcher. Her mother fetches her a towel. They talk on, tense.

After a brief silence, Jessica asks her mother to hand her the packet of drips that are injected into her left wrist on one end and hanging on the stretcher at the other. A male nurse comes up to them and lowers one side of the railing on the stretcher. Jessica gets up and starts to walk around in her blue socks. She smiles at the floor. Her mother sits rubbing her palms and asks her not to exert herself too much. Jessica rolls her eyes and gets back into the stretcher.

Jessica and her mother laugh a little. A lady in a white coat walks up and says, “You gotta go back.” The two women look at each other and Jessica drops her head into her mother’s bosom. They hug. The mother sits back down in her chair, leaving Jessica be. Her phone rings again. She answers and tells the caller about the situation. There’s uncertainty in her voice. She hands the phone to Jessica.

Jessica, still talking on the phone, looks around nervously at the blue curtains that surround her and the other patients. Another patient is wheeled past on a stretcher. “That’s my daughter,” says the mother, pointing to Jessica. The patient turns with difficulty and smiles at her. Jessica tries to smile back. She hangs up.

An old woman with a hat and a walking stick approaches. Jessica’s mother seems to know her. “How’s your foot?” asks Jessica’s mother. She sits down next to the new visitor and the two talk.

But Jessica starts to cry. Her mother walks over to her. She’s shaking heavily and seems inconsolable. The doctors have asked her to “get ready.” They pull her away towards one of the curtained areas. She’s holding her mother tight. Her mother pats her shoulder.

Jessica regains composure and takes a few deep breaths. A doctor and nurse take her into a curtained area as her mother looks on. They pull the curtains closed with a sharp movement. Another nurse pulls away the mother, whose cheeks suddenly become wet with fresh tears.

The anti-semitic website http://revolutionmuslim.com, that was run by Yousef Al-Khattab, a New York cab driver, has been shut down. Private investigator Bill Warner told the Ink today that he succeeded in convincing the service that hosted the controversial website to discontinue its services for Al-Khattab. Neither the hosting service nor Al-Khattab were available for comment.

Al-Khattab, 41*, was formerly a Jew named Joseph Cohen, who grew up and lived amongst the Hassidic communities in Williamsburg. He converted to Islam “almost a decade ago.”* According to Warner and other critics, he has used his site to incite violence against Jewish people and has been known to be openly anti-semitic.

Al-Khattab was the subject of an extensive profile by the Ink in March 2009.

*Corrections made as per Mr. Al-Khattab’s correspondence.