Slain NYC cabbie’s kids finally learn of his death day after he was fatally beaten in Queens

The young kids of a slain city taxi driver didn’t know their father was dead till after a Sunday press conference — where the oldest ones cried thinking they were mourning someone else, kin told The Post.

“They were asking me, ‘Mommy, why are you wearing black? Where is Daddy?’ because they know that he goes to work today and tomorrow,” Abigail Barwuah, the stricken widow of murdered cabbie Kutin Gyimah, recalled in an exclusive interview. 

“‘He went yesterday, and he’s supposed to be home today, where is he?’ ” she said their children asked her.

At first, the family told the kids that their father had gone “back to Africa” because “it’s a custom to not tell kids about death when they are very young.” explained the victim’s brother, Richmond Awuah, noting the family is from Ghana.

Awuah said his brother’s oldest two children, ages 8 and 7, cried at the press conference because they saw their mother and other relatives upset and didn’t know the family’s tears were for their father. 

“But after the press conference, we broke the news to them,” Awuah said.

Kin added that Gyimah’s youngest two kids, ages 5 and 3, can’t even comprehend what happened yet.   

At the presser, Gyimah’s widow fought through tears as she called on Mayor Eric Adams and the NYPD to catch the five suspects who fatally beat her husband in a botched robbery in Queens early Saturday.

Gyimah, 52, was killed chasing down the suspects after they tried to rob him in Arverne. One of the assailants took a swing at the cabbie — sending him flying to the street, where he cracked his head, police said.

Gyimah’s weeping widow was barely audible Sunday as she struggled to speak. 

Barwuah described her late husband as “responsible,” “loving” and “caring” as she stood alongside by more than a dozen relatives, friends and fellow cab drivers. She said he spent most of his free time with his kids.

“He didn’t rest throughout the pandemic — he was working,” the inconsolable widow said. “He was a good, good man. He was my backbone.”

Barwuah told The Post her husband would usually let creeps and criminals go rather than escalating confrontation.

“He would tell them to just go and drive off because he knows how crazy the city is,” she said. “ ‘Just leave them to go.’ I don’t know what happened this time.”

The New York State Federation of Taxi Drivers is offering a $15,000 reward for information leading to the capture of the three men and two women sought in connection with the robbery and fatal attack.

Raphael Barwuah, the victim’s father-in-law who lives with the family, said his daughter works as a nurse’s aid at Montefiore Hospital. He said Gyimah went to work early Saturday, and the family then got a phone call informing them he’d been killed.

The elder Barwuah echoed his daughter’s call for justice, urging Adams and NYPD Commissioner Keechant Sewell to “do what they need to do.”

An accountant in his home country of Ghana, Gyimah came to New York nearly two decades ago and found work driving taxis, said best friend Samuel Ayebi.

Ayebi, 50, said he picked Gyimah up at the airport when he arrived In the US about 18 years ago and introduced him to the taxi business.

“He was very hardworking… It’s a very painful loss,” Ayebi said.

A GoFundMe page set up for the family had raised nearly $70,000 as of Sunday evening. 

Barwuah said on Sunday afternoon that she had cried herself dry.

“I’m not even having any tears anymore. I feel so lost,” she told The Post. “My kids’ hero is gone. 

“What they’ve done to me, they’ve taken something so precious from me,” she said of her husband’s killers.

“All I want is justice for my husband. If I get justice, it’s not going to bring him back but at least I’ll get some closure that those who did it have been arrested.”