Young Brooklyn dad shot to death walking dogs planned to move, get married

A young Brooklyn dad with big plans to get a job, get married and leave the city had his dreams snuffed out by a killer’s bullets, his heartbroken girlfriend told the New York Daily News Sunday.

Aarmani Dawkins, 25, was walking his aunt’s dogs when he was ambushed in the courtyard of his aunt’s building on Pitkin Ave. near Pennsylvania Ave. in East New York at about 5:30 p.m. Saturday. He lived with his grandmother just around the corner from his aunt’s building.

“I just wish I had more time with him,” Dawkins’ childhood sweetheart, Jadzia Soto, said. “I was literally just thinking last week about marrying him.”

Dawkins was soon due to pick up his 5-year-old son, Aarmani Jr., when he was killed.

“I texted him and I was like, ‘Do you have any chicken nuggets or something for the baby when he gets here?’ and he didn’t reply,” Soto, 24, said. “I was like, ‘Oh that’s weird.’ It was just left on delivered.”

“Like 30 minutes later, around 6:30, his sister was calling me. She was like, ‘You need to come to the hospital.’ She told me, ‘Aarmani got shot. He’s dead.'”

Soto was left to explain to their son what happened.

“I told him this morning, and he was crying his eyes out,” Soto said of their son. “He plays video games, so he knows what it means when somebody dies, but he was crying. And when I was breaking it down he was like, ‘Daddy’s an angel, he’s with grandma now.'”

Soto heard the details of what happened from a relative who watched surveillance footage of the slaying.

“He was holding the dogs, and he ended up letting go of the leashes and he looked confused. He was wearing a ski mask. He would wear it sometimes because he didn’t like his facial hair because it made him look older,” she said. “He put his hands up and dropped the leash, and then they still shot him.”

Medics rushed Dawkins, shot in the neck and stomach, to Brookdale University Hospital, but he could not be saved.

“There were people running, and we heard two shots,” said one neighbor, who declined to give her name. “It happened in the courtyard. A person was on the ground. He was facedown.”

“These buildings used to be very good, and this kind of stuff never happened,” another neighbor added. “The last two months with these new younger kids hanging here there’s been incidents but nothing crazy to this extent.”

The 75th Precinct, where the shooting took place, has seen eight homicides through Oct. 27 of this year, a sharp drop from the 18 killings in the same time period last year.

Police believe Dawkins was the killer’s intended target, though a spokeswoman couldn’t provide any information on a motive Sunday.

Hawkins went to Thomas Jefferson High School but left after Soto got pregnant to help her take care of their son. The couple met through Facebook, where they had mutual friends.

“I knew him since I was 13 and he was 14,” Soto explained. “I hated him at first — he was too pretty. And then I started talking to him and then I was like, ‘I love this man so much.'”

Soto called Dawkins her first love.  “We planned all of our life since I was 15 years old, and I didn’t think he would just die,” she said.

Dawkins had two other children, ages 5 and 2, through other relationships and spent most of his time taking care of his grandmother and young son, Soto said.

“He would ask, ‘When will you marry me?’ and I would say, ‘Whenever you can make me a housewife,'” Soto said. “He was like, ‘Give me a few months, and we can get there and leave New York.”

She said he was working on getting a job so he could move them to South Carolina.

“He was like the sweetest person ever. He was figuring out some things, but he had a routine and didn’t mess with anyone,” she said. “He usually doesn’t do much, which is why this is confusing. He would run errands for his family, play video games and take care of his kid.”

Dawkins was “blunt and funny,” with a dark sense of humor, she said. In his spare time, he’d play Call of Duty and Apex Legends.

“He would walk his aunt’s dogs like once or twice a day,” she said.

Soto can’t imagine who could want Dawkins dead.

“I feel like it could’ve been mistaken identity because how do you identify someone if they have his face covered?” she said. “He is tall as hell, and I don’t know how anyone can mistake him.”

“He had no problems with nobody,” she added. “He looked mean, but he was so sweet. He never fought before in his life.”