"I tried my best to save him, I tried everything," said the victim's brother, Khristian Paiva.
In the end, it was the other way around for 19-year-old Khristian Paiva.
He was saved by his brother, Dario, Friday night.
It started near a video store on Jamaica Avenue in Woodhaven.
That's where Khristian says a group of four young men, who were all strangers, approached him for no reason at all.
Moments later, they tried to punch and stab him.
"One of the boys said, 'Tonight I'm ready to do something stupid. I don't' care what happens,'" Khristian said.
Khristian happened to be on the phone with his mother at the time.
She became so frightened she asked her older son to help.
"I was like, 'Oh my God, Dario. They're hitting Khristian.' So he run, he run like he never did," said the victim's mother, Norma Paiva.
When Dario got there, he and his brother could have left, but in a split second they made a deadly choice: to go back up the stairs to see if they could tell police which way the suspects ran.
"They came chasing after us, all of them, with knives," Khristian said.
Khristian told Eyewitness News that he couldn't run as quickly as his brother, and so Dario stepped in to protect him.
"They stabbed him in cold blood with everyone on the train tracks watching," Khristian said.
He said what happened next was so frustrating, it only added to the tragic situation and created confusion from all ends.
"Policeman runs up and he says 'What am I supposed to do?' And he runs back down and all you hear is the ambulance down in the street saying, 'He's not in the street. Where is he?'" Khristian said.
So now, this family that already lost another son in a car accident must somehow move on.
Their father is not so sure.
"What do I have left? What I do?" said the victim's father, Dante Paiva.
The family believes gang members are responsible for the killing.
They hope the coming days somehow yield answers.
"They have to find them. There was no reason to kill my son," Norma said.
Witnesses report seeing three men and a pit bull fleeing the scene.
