Where Are Our Parents: Two Harlem 12-Year-Olds Charged With Attempted Murder After Pushing Shopping Cart Four Floors Onto “Philanthropist”

These two little hooligans couldn’t have picked a worst time to be out there doing hoodrat shyte with their friends.

The Manhattan mom critically injured by a shopping cart tossed from the fourth-floor walkway of an East Harlem mall was devoted to kids like the two 12-year-olds charged yesterday with the senseless crime.

Marion Salmon Hedges was hurt just moments after buying bags of candy that she had planned to hand out last night to trick-or-treaters on her Upper West Side — and across town at the Stanley M. Isaacs Neighborhood Center on E. 93rd St., where she volunteered.

Instead, the 47-year-old mother of two was at Harlem Hospital on Halloween night, unconscious and barely clinging to life.

“It’s in God’s hands,” the victim’s father-in-law, Michael Hedges, said through his tears. “You see her laying there, unconscious in the bed, with 50,000 tubes in her. She has absolutely no recognition, not even a glimmer of anything.”

Over at the neighborhood center, executive director Wanda Wooten said Hedges was a dynamo fundraiser who also belonged to the Junior League and was active in her church.

“She’s a terrific member,” said Wooten, who said she went shoe-shopping with Hedges on Friday. “We were talking about the impending snowstorm. It’s all the more shocking. You can’t believe this happened.”

The 12-year-olds, whose names are being withheld by The News because of their age, are from the neighborhood served by the center.

Wooten said she didn’t recognize their names.

Both were turned over to the Administration for Children’s Services after a Family Court hearing where they were each charged with assault in the first degree.

One of the boys was accompanied in court by his mother and a paternal uncle.

The second was with his mother and an older brother. Neither of their dads were at the hearing.

Police believe the boys were horsing around when they sent the cart flying at about 5:49 p.m. Sunday and don’t believe they were targetting Hedges. A 14-year-old pal who tried to stop them told authorities, sources said.

“I’m beyond shocked,” Michael Hedges said, when told the boys’ ages. “They should throw the book at them.”

Marion Salmon Hedges, who attended the posh private Spence school and graduated from Barnard College, grew up the daughter of a businessman and a doctor and worked in real estate.

Her husband, also named Michael Hedges, has been working of late in Spain for Merrill Lynch. They have two children: Dayton, 13, and Elizabeth, 14.

“She’s a super, super nice person,” a close family friend said. “She’s been involved in not for profits and charities for more than 25 years since high school. Forever. That’s the kind of person she is.”

Oh yeah: it’s a wrap for these two little knuckleheads. And just like that, two inner city kids’ lives are probably ruined. Over some dumb isht.

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