Queens mom still searching for clues three years after her correction officer son was murdered: ‘Just give me justice for my son’

Three years have passed since an off-duty New York City correction officer was murdered outside a late-night party in Queens, and his still-grieving mother has more questions than answers.

Beverly Ford says her only hope these days for finding out who shot her son John Jeff is a recent murder that happened just a block over.

“I’m really hoping that incident will bring some light,” Ford said about a family dispute that turned deadly Saturday night along the same street where Jeff was killed in 2020.

“It might be selfish of me, but I’m hoping that incident — while they’re looking— it opens up something on John,” she told the Daily News on Monday. “Somebody will go, ‘I know what happened. I know who did this.’”

At the time of his murder in August 2020, Jeff, 28, who worked at the Anna M. Kross Center on Rikers Island, was heading to a late-night party with a 26-year-old woman who was a fellow correction officer. He had been looking for parking on Ridgedale St. near Defoe St. in South Jamaica around 3 a.m. when someone in another car began arguing with him.

As the occupants of both cars got out to confront one another, Jeff’s companion ran to get help. A few moments later, she heard gunshots, ran back and found Jeff lying face up on the ground.

Authorities said he was shot 11 times.

The horrific attack occurred less than a mile from his home in Rochdale.

“It’s been a long time, but it feels like yesterday,” said Ford, 57, her eyes brimming with tears at the thought of her son.

“I still go over there,” she said of the neighborhood where her son was killed. “I saw it on the news yesterday. That brought tears to my eyes. The signs, if you go around there, we put those up. We were doing our own investigation. But no one’s pushing it and it hurts me so bad.”

Cops at the time said the dispute that led to Jeff’s murder involved a road rage incident or a parking spot.

But Ford said she has her doubts.

“Only thing I know is he was with a girl. He was in a car,” she said. “They tried to say it was car rage but that’s not his car. That was the girl’s car. She’s driving. So if it was road rage, wouldn’t they have shot both of them?”

Ford said she used to go to the neighborhood where her son was killed on the 15th of every month to put up posters and to ask around.

“That’s the day it happened, Aug. 15,” she said. “We would go over to just say, you know, ‘John, we’re here for you. We’re not giving up. We’re not giving up.’”

The case Ford has pinned her hopes on involves a man who was killed during a cooking dispute in a Queens home, according to cops.

Police said a man shot his nephew to death and wounded his niece after an argument over cooking escalated into a physical confrontation in the home on Pineville Lane near Grayson St. in St. Albans, the sources said.

Chevaughn Millings, 25, was struck eight times in the chest and legs while the alleged shooter’s 20-year-old niece was hit three times in the legs. Cops recovered nine shell casings from the scene.

Medics took both victims to Jamaica Hospital, where Millings was pronounced dead. The woman was in stable condition.

The 38-year-old uncle fled in a white Mercedes SUV and has not been caught, sources said.

Ford expressed sympathy for Millings’ family and said she hoped something positive could come out of his death.

“It brought light to my son,” she said. “Before I die in this world, just give me justice for my son.”

Ford described herself as close with her son. She said he’d gone out the night of his death in a great mood.

“He was that age,” she said. “He had no kids. He was really living his life.”