After a son’s death, a mother remembers

Joshua Basin was killed a little before 10 p.m. on Friday after Ryan Beauchamp, a 33-year-old homeless man, allegedly initiated a fight with him on the platform of the L train at the Bedford Avenue stop in Brooklyn, sending the two of them tumbling onto the tracks, police said. While Beauchamp, who police arrested on Wednesday, managed to pull himself back up onto the platform, Basin was hit by an oncoming train, according to police.

He died a short time later at Belleveue Hospital, police said.

“My only son, my only son, he was my only son,” Zena Basin said, clutching a album filled with photos of her son throughout his childhood. “He was a twin, but his twin didn’t make it. They told me he might also not make it, so every day with him was like a miracle. He was my life. I don’t know what to do now.”

A student at LaGuardia Community College in Long Island City, Joshua Basin was a bit of a Renaissance man, his mother said, with a penchant for everything from poetry to psychiatry. While he was good at science and wanted to be a psychiatrist, his mother said he had a soft spot for the arts and enjoyed acting and writing.

“He loved writing; he loved the city; he loved everything,” Zena Basin said. “He was always writing poems and stories.”

A longtime resident of Howard Beach, Zena Basin, originally from Colombia, and Joshua’s father, now deceased, brought their son to places all over the world while he was growing up.

“He started walking in Greece,” said Zena Basin, a retired NYPD officer who is now caring for her elderly mother who just suffered a stroke. “He went to France, China, London, Spain, Hawaii. I could go on and on. He went on 19 cruises. He loved traveling.”

Looking at countless photos of a young Joshua —a baby being held by his mother and kissed by his father, a 2-year-old hamming it up for the camera and a 5-year-old wrapping his arms around his mother —Zena Basin broken down, holding her face in her hands, her shoulders heaving.

“Why did this happen?” she asked. “My son wasn’t a fighter. He radiated wherever he went. He was called the boy with the golden heart. He had so many friends, so many people who loved him.”