One family’s holiday heartache

What Diana Colon misses most is her son Jacob’s chubby cheeks.
“I just miss his smile, his joking around,” she said at a candle-lit memorial to commemorate the one-year anniversary of her son’s death in Richmond Hill. “He was always a joker, you know, and I miss that a lot and his chubby cheeks. I just miss all of that.”
At the somber ceremony held on Sunday, December 16, Diana said that Jacob - J.J. - would now be 13 years old had he not been killed by a hit-and-run driver on December 16, 2006. Jacob had been heading home to get his bicycle after leaving his mother’s job at the laundromat on 108th Street and Atlantic Avenue when he was struck.
Police believe that 46-year-old Juan Franjul had been speeding away from the scene of another accident when he hit Jacob, and Franjul was charged with speeding, failure to stop at a red light, leaving the scene of a fatality and leaving the scene of property damage.
On Tuesday, January 15, Franjul is scheduled to appear in Queens Criminal Court, said a spokesperson for Queens District Attorney Richard Brown. The Colon family has been pushing for the maximum sentence if he is convicted.
“[Franjul] is walking this earth, and my son can’t walk this earth because of him,” Diana said.
Meanwhile, in the year since Jacob’s death, Diana and the rest of her family - fianc/ Todd Gibson and children, 19-year-old Jasmin, eight-year-old Kyana and six-year-old Elijiah - have had to learn to live with an empty seat at the table and a young boy’s bedroom left mostly the same as it had been when then 12-year-old Jacob died.
“I still have everything of his. I haven’t been able to part from anything of his,” his heartbroken mother said of the stuffed animals and action figures that once lined the walls of her son’s bedroom. Diana said that she had to store some of the mementoes away because a few went missing - she believes that her son’s friends took the toys home as keepsakes.
Last year the family spent their first Christmas without Jacob.
“It has been especially hard on the holidays, on Thanksgiving,” Diana said. “You know who is missing, he was the jokester of the family.”
When asked if the one-year anniversary has been difficult for his family, Gibson said, “Every day. Every day is hard.”
The haunting recollections of her son have become so unbearable that Diana hopes to move her family from their apartment on 110th Street to a place devoid of painful family memories and farther away from the intersection where Jacob was killed.
“It’s hard every time I pass through here because I see his body laying there. I didn’t know that was my son until I saw his hat and his sneakers and that’s how I knew it was him,” Diana said.
Still, from a tragedy, Diana has felt an outpouring of support from her son’s friends and her Queens neighbors.
“I didn’t expect it but that’s how I knew a lot of people loved him and cared about it,” Diana said.
More than two dozen teenagers turned out for the memorial, lighting candles in the shape of a heart and bearing handmade messages for their friend.
“He was a funny guy,” said his soft-spoken 10-year-old cousin Christopher Chudhry, adding, “He liked to play with Marvel toys.”
Even more than the makeshift table setup on the median along Atlantic Avenue, Diana would like a street sign to bear her son’s name. So far, she has met with one community group but has been told that the application process takes several months.
“I’m still waiting for that to happen,” she said, “Hopefully by his birthday, I’m hoping to God that will happen.”
However, the memory of her son will remain whether or not the Richmond Hill corner is renamed, Diana said.
“He is still living in all of us, everybody who knew him and all of his friends,” she said. “He is going to be remembered no matter what.”