Breaking News: Weeping mother says young daughter of NYC cafe employee shot in head doesn't know about shooting

The man shot in the head during a horrible caught-on-video robbery at a Manhattan cafe is a 37-year-old father who can’t speak yet but is luckily still alive, according to his grieving mother.

Grace Pea, 70, sobbed at her Washington Heights apartment as she looked at a Facebook photo of her son Harrison Ferreiras holding his now-8-year-old daughter when she was a toddler in 2017.

“I am heartbroken,” Pea, who walks with a walker, told The Post through a translator in Spanish, adding that the family has yet to inform her granddaughter that the child’s father was seriously hurt in the shootout.

Pea said she has been standing watch by her son’s bedside in the Metropolitan Hospital Center’s intensive care unit for the past two days, where he is hooked up to tubes and can’t speak but remains attentive — flashing “grateful” thumbs-up gestures at his medical caretakers.

“[Police] came knocking on my door,” Pea said of the moment she found out about the incident. “I would have gone [to the hospital] even if I had to crawl.” “I was in tears.”

Ferreiras was eating at the counter of the Seafood King Fish Market at Broadway and West 163rd Street shortly before 2 a.m. Wednesday when the masked robber pressed a distinctive blue gun against the diner’s head and fired a single shot, striking him in the right cheek.

Ferreiras sank to the floor as a pool of blood gathered around him.

According to video acquired by The Post, he appeared to try to get up before the cashier, who had been hidden behind the counter, came to his side.

According to authorities, he was taken to the hospital in critical condition.

According to a restaurant employee on Friday, Ferreiras is a regular who orders “salmon, yellow rice, and occasionally soup.”

“I’m sorry because he’s a good person and a good customer.” “He respects everyone — he’s no trouble,” she said.

According to the employee, two NYPD investigators went by the diner for around 10 minutes Friday to ask for information from staff.

“His phone has not stopped ringing,” Pea added, referring to Ferreiras’ plight.

“Harrison is known by everyone in the neighborhood,” she went on to say. “The doctors must stop people from going to the hospital.”

“People are kind, they’re throwing themselves on the floor because of this tragedy,” she continued, referring to their anguish and sadness. “The doctors said he is very loved because of all the people coming to see him.”

Her son, the youngest of her three children, she described as “a good kid” who frequently does favors for neighbors on the block.

“If he was a guy from the streets, it would be a different story,” she said. “Why my son?“I gave my kids education. … But that [shooter] did what he did. That stuff hurts.”

She stated that she needs her critically injured kid to return home in order to find “peace in [her] heart.”

“Of course I’d love to go to the doctor and he can tell me, ‘Oh, you’ll have your son back home healthy and safe,’ but it’s not like that. It’s a process. It’s a long process,” Peña said.

She is also hoping for justice, with the shooter of her son behind bars.

“I want everybody to know,” Peña said. “I want the person who did this to go to jail, lock him up. He has to pay for what he did. They have to find him and make him pay for what he did.”

The gunman, who had not been apprehended as of Friday, is described as being roughly 5 feet 5 inches tall and was last seen wearing black clothing, a black helmet, and a mask.

The ruthless shooter was also seen carrying a black plastic bag with the cash he allegedly compelled the cashier to hand over from the register.

Meanwhile, Ferreiras’ third-grade daughter, who was kept in the dark about what happened to her father, was absent from school on Thursday and Friday.

“She and her father are very close. She loves her father a lot, a lot,” said the girl’s other grandmother, who did not want to be identified. “Maybe if we tell her, we’ll have to take her to the hospital because she loves him a lot.

“We do things with her so she doesn’t ask for him,” said the 61-year-old woman. “Sometimes he goes to the hospital because he has stomach problems.” I’ll tell her he’s in the hospital because he’s in pain if she asks.”

According to the grandmother, Ferreiras was known to take his daughter out to dine and to the movies.

“Every time she calls, ‘Daddy, bring me pizza, bring me McDonalds,’ he’ll do it,'” she told me.

“My daughter is crying. Me, too. … Everybody is crying. It’s terrible,” the woman added. “I feel very, very sad, not good. I have a son. … I love [Ferreiras] like [he is] my son, too. He’s a nice person, beautiful. Never in my life [have I seen] him fight with anybody. He has a good heart.

“I can’t go to see him,” she murmured, shaking her head. “May God help him stay alive.”

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