If You Knew Your Son Committed A Crime, Would You Do What This Mom Did?

Why 17-year-old Carlos Taveras did what he did remains a mystery. All police know is that he committed a seemingly pointless and potentially dangerous assault — against a working man just trying to do his job and get home.

And Taveras thought he’d gotten away with it, too. Until one law-abiding citizen recognized his picture on fliers posted around the Bronx, New York neighborhood of Inman, and turned the wanted teen in to police.

Who was this brave citizen, who displayed no hesitation about ratting out a wanted criminal?

It was Carlos Taveras’ mom.

According to New York City police, it was May 3 in the early morning hours — around 4 am, in fact — when a Metropolitan Transit Authority Bus was making its route through the Bronx. The bus had come to a stop at a red light on the corner of Isham St. and Sherman Ave. in the Inwood neighborhood of the Bronx.

The driver of the BX12 bus — who had been making the same rounds for the past 13 years — was just idling the engine, waiting for the light to change when all of a sudden, some strange liquid blasted him in the face.

That was Carlos Taveras at work. For some reason that investigators from the NYPD’s 34th precinct station have yet to figure out, Taveras reached through an opened driver’s side window of the motionless bus and sprayed the veteran driver with a substance — though what that substance was remains as elusive as Taveras’ motive in committing this strange and senseless attack.

Fortunately, apart from some minor eye irritation, the driver was not harmed by Taveras’ early morning spritz-bottle Pearl Harbor. Police suspect that the substance was pepper spray.

The teen fled the scene and his grainy picture was caught on surveillance video. Cops made some still photos of the video and posted the fliers around the area.

It didn’t take long before some neighborhood adults who knew Taveras and his family recognized the youth in the blurry photos. They showed the fliers to Taveras’ mother. She confronted him with the evidence.

The youth copped to the crime — to his mom. But he may never have seen her next move coming. The angry mother immediately hauled her son into the 34th Precinct station — and turned him over to the police.

Thanks to a take-no-crap mom, Carlos Taveras now faces a felony assault charge.