Calls for justice at Harlem funeral of boy, 2, whose dad is accused of beating him to death

They were still counting his age in months, and for all 32 of them Maliek Morrison was a bright bundle of  joy, until he was brutally beaten to death — allegedly by his own father, relatives said at the boy’s funeral Thursday.

Family members swapped stories about Maliek’s radiant smile, about the little legs that excitedly carried him through the park.

They also spoke of justice, and the need to protect young children from their tormentors, even the ones they call “Daddy.”

“Maliek’s life — and his death — will not be meaningless,” the boy’s family vowed in an obituary read out loud at his funeral at Harlem’s Mother AME Zion Church. “Justice for Maliek is not just a phrase. It is a promise. It is a movement. It is the demand that no other child’s life be lost because cries for help went unheard.”

Bright white lilies and deep red roses covered a tiny white casket, not even big enough to carry all his toys. Photos of the 2-year-old boy lined the church’s altar, each of him smiling in a documented happy moment.

Most were with his mother, Cyndy Williams, who looked just as happy as the boy, a smile replaced by paralyzing anguish as she watched the coffin loaded into a hearse on the side of a snowy street.

For days, Williams had maintained hope that Maliek would survive the brutal beating in a Queens shelter that left him with a blown right pupil, fractured pelvis, lacerations to his liver and brain damage.

Maliek lingered on the edge of death for five days before succumbing to his injuries on Feb. 4.

“From the very moment he opened his eyes each morning, he greeted the day with the biggest, most beautiful smile,” Maliek’s obituary said.

“Before anything else, he would quietly push open Mommy’s bedroom door, climb into the bed, and snuggle close. Those morning cuddles were sacred. They were love in its simplest and most powerful form.”

“Every day that I woke up, he would be in my face, staring at me, eyes wide open, waiting for food,” said Maliek’s cousin, Joseph Edwards, who often watched the boy when his mother went to work.

Maliek’s father, Dayvon Morrison, 30, was charged with murder and acting in a manner injurious to a child for the savage Jan. 30 assault.

Maliek was staying with his father at the Manhattan View Hotel, which is being used as a homeless shelter, on 21st St. near 38th Ave. in Long Island City, when he was attacked, cops said.

After spending a night in the hotel-turned-shelter, Morrison woke up the next morning to Maliek’s face covered in bruises — but did not seek medical help, prosecutors said. He later told cops he must have hit Maliek the night before, but that he’d been drinking and couldn’t recall what happened, according to court papers.

After Morrison returned his other child to that child’s mother in East Harlem on Monday, someone in that household called police about Maliek, according to court papers.

Medics rushed Maliek to New York-Presbyterian Hospital Weill Cornell where he died days later.

Relatives said Maliek had been caught in the middle of a bitter custody battle, and they railed against the courts and the city’s child welfare agency,

“Anyone who knew Maliek knew this truth: He was the sweetest child. All he wanted was love. All he deserved was love,” the obituary said. “No mother should have to live with the memory of her baby’s last moments being filled with violence instead of safety. That kind of pain does not fade. It does not soften. It lives in the heart forever.”