Relatives of mugger killed in Queens say they don’t blame shooter

Family of the mugger who was shot dead Wednesday by the Queens man he attempted to rob say their slain relative was mentally disturbed and that his intended victim shouldn’t be blamed for defending himself.

“We don’t fault the shooter,” said Stephan Gonzalez, 35, who is related to the slain crook’s adopted family by marriage and has known him for more than 12 years.

“We all feel that Cody should had been in a psych facility. If anything, the state failed him,” he told the Daily News on Wednesday night.

A man cop sources identified as Cody Gonzalez, 32, was shot after he attempted to mug Queens resident Charles Foehner, 65, demanding cash and cigarettes outside his 82nd Ave. apartment building near Queens Blvd. in Kew Gardens at 2 a.m.

The attacker was waving a sharp object that turned out to be a pen and bore down on his target even as he was shot five times, video showed.

Gonzalez suffered from mental illness and had been living in a halfway house before meeting his end at the hands of his intended victim, according to his family. He usually managed to stay out of trouble — so long as he was taking his medication, they said.

“He wasn’t a bad kid. He really wasn’t,” said Anthony Aguilar, who is a cousin to Gonzalez’s adopted mother. “It’s ‘cause he stopped taking his damn pills. He was fine when he was taking his medication.”

Cody Gonzalez, who was born Cody Baum, changed his name after he was adopted along with his sister by Sonia Gonzalez as a child, according to Aguilar.

Aguilar said Sonia Gonzalez spoiled her adopted children “relentlessly,” and that he enjoyed a happy childhood growing up in Brooklyn and later in Ozone Park, Queens.

“She’d get money, she’d spend every dime. She’d fill up the fridge with everything,” he said. “It’s not like she deprived them of sunlight. They were spoiled.”

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However, as Cody Gonzalez grew older, he fell in with a bad crowd and began running into trouble with police, disappointing his frustrated mother, Aguilar said.

“He started hanging out with the wrong people and then he just stopped coming home,” he recounted. “[His mother] got tired of it, because every time she would see him it was always with the police. So she was like, I can’t no more.”

Aguilar empathized with his cousin’s killer, saying everyone has a right defend themselves.

“If he tried to rob him, the guy’s only defending himself,” said Aguilar. “You can’t blame him for defending himself.”

Foehner, who said he mistook Cody Gonzalez’s pen for a knife, turned himself in to police in the wake of Tuesday’s fatal shooting.

Foehner faces illegal weapon charges over his revolver, which he was not licensed to carry.

With Rocco Parascandola