Murdered man’s girlfriend and cousin recount details of deadly home invasion — and ask ‘Why?’

Forty-eight hours into their investigation, Suffolk County homicide detectives have no reason to believe that Demitri Hampton, slain by gunmen in a home invasion Sunday, was anything but an innocent victim, according to Lt. Jack Fitzpatrick, chief of the homicide division.

Hampton, 21, died Sunday at Peconic Bay Medical Center of a gunshot wound to his chest, sustained in a struggle with armed men who had broken into his home on Priscilla Avenue in Flanders shortly after 3 a.m., police said.

Broken-hearted family members said Tuesday they want to quell rumors that Hampton was involved in something that made him a target.

“There’s a lot of speculation, a lot of talk out there… it’s not the right talk… it’s not the truth at all,” said Hampton’s brother, Jamal Davis, 26, of Riverhead. “We want to get the truth out there.”

Hampton’s relatives gathered in the living room of his parent’s Polish Town home to talk to reporters about the young man, hoping to convey the kind of person he was, the kind of family he came from.

“Demetri was not on that side of the tracks, because he was raised better than that,” said his sister Jennifer Davis, 27, of Riverhead. “We all was raised better than that. We are not that type of family.”

The siblings described their younger brother — the baby of the family — as a charismatic guy liked by everyone who knew him. He enjoyed nothing better than making people laugh, even harboring a desire to become a stand-up comic. He would do anything for anybody, they said, always looking to be helpful.

He was the apple of their mother’s eye, according to his siblings, who joked about how their younger brother seemed to have their mom, Juanita Trent, wrapped around his finger.

Hampton, a 2010 Riverhead High School graduate, had just started his final semester at Suffolk County Community College, where he was in the criminal justice program. He was to graduate with an associate’s degree in May and hoped to continue his education at Mercy College in Dobbs Ferry.

Family members described a young man unsure of what he wanted to do with his life. His biggest problem might have been he wanted to do so many things: law enforcement, forensics, comedy, acting. He was considering enlisting in the military.

Of one thing he was certain, his sister said: “He wanted to get out of here. He wanted to leave Riverhead.” He dreamed of moving to California, she said.

But the world of possibilities that lay before Hampton was robbed from him Sunday in the Flanders home he shared with his cousin Latisha Diego, her boyfriend and her children.

Hampton was the only person awake Sunday morning at around 3 a.m. He was playing a video game, Diego said. It was one of his favorite pastimes.

Hampton’s girlfriend of two-and-a-half years, Frances Acevedo, was asleep in his bedroom downstairs. She was awakened by a commotion overhead — shouting, a scuffle.

“I screamed out for him because I saw he wasn’t next to me,” Acevedo recalled. “One of them came downstairs with a gun — a long gun, a big gun,” she said through tears. “He told me to get upstairs and sat me down on the couch and told me not to move.”

She described the intruders as two men dressed in black from head to toe, wearing black masks that completely covered their faces, and black gloves. Each had a big gun, Acevedo said.

One of the intruders kicked in Diego’s bedroom door. “He told me, ‘Don’t move,'” she said.

The women said the intruders didn’t ransack the house and they didn’t take anything — except “the most precious thing of all,” Hampton’s cousin said.

“The only thing they took that night was Demitri’s life,” Diego said. 

Neither woman witnessed the shooting that fatally injured Hampton, they said.

“I don’t know what happened,” Diego said. “I didn’t hear anything. The next thing I know he’s running in and telling me to call the police and he was shot. He was bleeding,” she said.

Hampton was rushed to Peconic Bay Medical Center, where he later succumbed.

His death sent shock waves not only through his close-knit extended family, but through the entire community. He was a popular student at Riverhead High School, where he ran track, played basketball and was very involved with the Council for Unity, an organization whose mission is to stop violence in schools and communities.

Friends, professors and advisers at the eastern campus of the community college, where Hampton has studied the past two years, are also in shock, said Prof. James Banks, the college’s director multicultural affairs, and a mentor to Hampton. In a phone interview Tuesday, Banks described a young man who worked hard and was eager to do well, who had many interests and great potential.

“He had so many different possibilities because of his many talents and abilities,” Banks said.

With pictures of him spread out before them on a coffee table in his mother’s cozy living room, Hampton’s girlfriend, brother, sister and cousins — Diego, along with Fawn and Neko Gettling — as well as his best friend, Jason Sims, alternating between tears and laughter, shared memories of the man whose presence was still almost palpable.

As she spoke, Hampton’s sister turned over in her hands a medal Demitri won at a track meet. “My heart physically aches,” Jennifer Davis said, crying.” It’s broken, broken. There ain’t nothin’ else I can say.”

Then she thought of one more thing.

“Justice gotta be seen for Demitri. They gotta find who did this to him, because Demitri didn’t deserve this.”

Photo captions, from top: 1. Jamal Davis, brother of the slain man, Tuesday afternoon in his mother’s living room; 2. Demitri Hampton in his high school yearbook photo; 3. Jennifer Davis, Hampton’s sister, breaks down as she talks about her pain; 4. The two women who were awakened by intruders and held at gunpoint during the home invasion; 5. Jennifer Davis, Hampton’s sister, holds a medal her brother won in track.

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