A fearless Brooklyn dad was fatally shot on Tuesday because he refused to stand by and allow a couple of punks to smash into parked vehicles in a hardworking area of East Williamsburg, cops and witnesses said.
“Hey, what are you trying to do? Break into people’s cars?” Michael “Mush” Matusiak said to the thieves that he had followed around the corner with a colleague from his sheet-metal job at around 8 a.m. One of them wheeled around without saying a word and opened fire.
Matusiak, 53, was struck several times in the chest and collapsed between two cars on Knickerbocker Avenue. The co-worker, Derrick Robinson, 57, was shot in the torso and grazed on the ear, and a 13-year-old, Cala Newberry, was grazed in the hip as she walked to school.
The two surviving victims were recovering at Elmhurst Hospital, according to police.
“Mike just wanted to help everybody,” said his fiancée, Yvonne Carrasquillo. “If he would see somebody scratch your car, he would come up to them and tell them, ‘Listen why you do that for? Don’t do that!’ ”
The grieving woman learned of the tragedy when she saw the words “RIP Mike” on Facebook.
“I got the call to check Facebook,” she said. “I texted him and said, ‘Baby please tell me you’re ok.’ Nobody answered, so I knew it was true.”
In the 90th Precinct, where the gruesome crime took place, two cars and a motorcycle were stolen from the street and two other vehicles’ windows were smashed this week.
“I’ve had my front window broken, my car stomped on. Stuff happens to my car every freaking time,” said Joshua Haimowitz, 27, a three-year resident.
“Everyone likes to think their neighborhood is safe. I think we’re a little naïve.”
Father of three Osires Arias, 40, said his car was targeted by thieves a few blocks from the murder scene at around the same time — and they took his wife’s $350 Fendi sunglasses.
“I get a knock on my window around 7:56. It was the [maintenance] man,” Arias said. “He said a thief broke into the car, but he scared them off. I ran outside, but they were gone. I just thank God none of my kids were hurt.”
Matusiak’s neighbors described “Mush” as a friendly, helpful guy. “He looked out for everyone as much as he could,” said Michael Caruso, 34, of Kingsland Avenue — where Matusiak, a divorced father of two girls in their 20s, Jeannie and Tabitha, lived with his two cats, Rusty and Tiger.
“There’s a lot of old people in the building,” Caruso added. “He’d be helping with their bags and their cars. He was really good with cars. He would take the people out, take them food shopping.”
The triggerman fired five shots from a .380-caliber handgun before taking off.
Police are looking for two men in their 20s who were caught on surveillance video approaching the scene and then running away — but they have not yet found video of the killing itself. Sources said detectives gathered “a lot of forensic evidence” and were confident they’d be able to ID the suspects.
A law-enforcement source said Matusiak was not afraid of mixing it up — but was not the type to instigate a fight.
“He’s a tough, knockaround guy from Greenpoint,” the source said. “He got up and went to work and wasn’t looking for any trouble. He saw these guys and wasn’t the kind of guy to back away.”
A co-worker at Matusiak’s shop, AB NY Mechanical Corp., said he tried to comfort the victim.
“I saw him shaking and kneeled down and grabbed his hand, and he stopped shaking, passed away, died in my arms,” said the colleague, who gave his name only as Luis.
