Baby got dead. We're so shocked.

Baby will be wearing his grillz to his own funeral.

His mama says Marcel Davis Jr., 16, was picking up a set of dental bling when he got gunned down at a north Omaha grillz and jewelry emporium. He was planning to wear them to the funeral of an incompetent armed robber.

What some say -- and what the cops aren't saying -- suggests there's a lot more to the story.

But what is incontrovertible is that if Baby had had a crappy lawyer a year and change ago, he'd be alive right now. In November 2007, Davis had been charged as an adult after allegedly pointing a stolen handgun at an Omaha police officer he was fleeing.

The cop shot him in the leg. Tuesday night, somebody had better aim.

Between assault and using a firearm to commit a felony, the teen could have been in jail a long, long time. Instead, ace defense attorney Bill Gallup got the case assigned to juvenile court, and young Davis recently emerged from the Douglas County Juvenile Detention Center.

AND NOW he and a 29-year-old are dead after going to fetch some grillz, it says in today's Omaha World-Herald:

Marcel Davis, a Northwest High School sophomore, planned to wear his new grill at a funeral today, a great aunt said.

Instead, the family is mourning his death after police met with his mother outside the shooting scene this morning and confirmed what relatives already knew — Davis was shot to death at the Midwest Grillz & Jewelry store just before 10:30 p.m.

William J. “Willie” Wakefield, 29, also was killed at the store, police said. Davis’s great aunt said her nephew had gone to Midwest Grillz with an older friend. It wasn’t immediately clear whether Wakefield was that friend.

A third person was being treated at Creighton University Medical Center for a gunshot wound suffered at the scene, 6209 Ames Ave. Brandon Boyce, 22, of Omaha, walked into the hospital about a half hour after the shooting.

Police would not say what connection any of the three have to the shooting. Police also would not give details about what happened inside the store.

Preliminary police dispatch reports centered on a robbery attempt. Police today said they were seeking no suspects and had made no arrests.

(snip)

Her nephew planned to wear it to the funeral today of a man killed while committing a robbery a couple weeks back, his aunt said.

Kyles said her nephew would not have been part of a robbery. He had been in trouble, she said, but he didn’t rob.

NO, HE JUST rode around in stolen cars and pulled stolen guns on Omaha cops. But noooo. . . .

"'Yeah, he got into some trouble, all kids do that, but as far as anything, he’s a good boy,'” Baby's mama, Alethea Goynes, told WOWT television today. “'He don’t want for nothing, he don’t steal from nobody or nothing.'"

It's never the little darling's fault, is it? No matter how long the rap sheet.

But if the store owner's father is giving KMTV television the straight scoop, Baby either was in the wrong place at exactly the wrong time, or he decided to add armed robbery to his repertoire . . . and it didn't work out.

The store's owner Andre McKesson tells his family three men came into the store about 10:30, one had a gun. McKesson claims he fired at the three men to save his own life. McKesson's father Flynn Franklin tells Action 3 News, "He was just trying to protect himself. Three guys tried to rob him and two got shot." Omaha Police have not confirmed the family's account of what may have happened in the store; police have said they are not looking for a suspect.

A YEAR and change ago, Goynes thought everything might work out for her baby boy:

"I hope he gets back on track and does the right thing," Goynes said. "I think this scared him. Hopefully, when it's all over, he can get back on track and go back to school and be the boy I know he is."

HE DIDN'T. In this case, you not only can cut the irony with a knife, you can slice it six ways from Sunday.

At any rate, all that counts now is that Marcel Davis Jr. died the boy we knew him to be -- the boy he was doomed to be through (lack of) nurture and (a deviant) popular culture. That's a tragedy.

And given how the Mother of the Year acted at one of Baby's hearings in late 2007, his funeral will be anything but dull.