Bx. dad & son, 4, get robbed after Yankees game

A happy day out to Yankee Stadium ended in terror for a 4-year-old boy and his dad — when a mugger followed them home and pointed a pistol in their faces in a caught-on-video holdup, police said Wednesday.

The 40-year-old victim and his young son were heading back from the ballgame at about 9 p.m. Monday when the crook tracked them to their apartment building near Sheridan Ave. and 161st St. in the Bronx, cops said.

“He was very impressed with Yankee Stadium; he’s never been there,” the rattled father told the Daily News, asking that his name be withheld. “He was very happy, and unfortunately this thing happened and killed all the magic.”

Surveillance video (photo) from inside the building shows the father and son, both sporting baseball caps, stepping into their Concourse Village apartment house. The child was playing with a souvenir Yankees bat he got at the Bronx Bombers’ 6-4 loss to the Baltimore Orioles.

The mugger, wearing a hooded black winter coat, slowly followed the father and son into the lobby, where he raised his jacket and pulled a small handgun from his waistband.

The dad said the robber initially tried to trick his way into the building, knocking on the door as he and his son entered the lobby. At first, the father refused to let him in, but when the crook started pushing buttons on the intercom, the victim had second thoughts.

“Now I think, ‘OK, maybe he lives here. I don’t want to be that neighbor,’ ” he recounted.

So he opened the door, and went back to talking with his son.

“That’s when I felt something at my back. He told me ‘Give me your money,’ ” the father said.

The video shows the father stepping between the hooded thief and his son, as the suspect waves around the pistol, demanding his belongings, cops said.

At first, the dad called out for a neighbor, but when the assailant told the child, “Hey, you better go away,” the father decided to hand over about $30, to keep his son out of danger.

“I was thinking of my son. Nothing else,” the victim said. “He was really scared. He was confused mostly, I think. He didn’t know what was going on.”

Neither father nor son were injured, and the robber ran off.

The experience has left the dad, who works an early morning shift at a deli, shaken and more cautious than ever.

“How things are in New York right now, we’d rather not go outside at night,” he said. “Thankfully, we didn’t get hurt. Imagine if my son, not knowing anything, got hurt just for 30 bucks.”

Even if the thief is caught, the dad said, he’s afraid he may be released after his court appearance, and if he lives in the neighborhood, he’ll keep victimizing people.

And the 4-year-old boy can’t stop talking about the crime whenever he enters or leaves his home.

“This morning when I took him downstairs he was pointing out the place that it happened,” the tot’s mother said. “When I came back home and I bring him from school, he said, ‘It happened right there.’”