The lives of two young local men came to a violent and tragic end outside a Woodbridge apartment last week.

Police were dispatched to Yardley Avenue inside the Forest View multi-family housing development at 10:58 p.m. Thursday, after a resident re­ported hearing shots fired. Both men were shot several times as they sat in a car outside of the Avenel apartment of one of the victims, authorities said.

According to police, Aleksy Bautin, 26, of Forest View Drive, and Sergey Barbashov, 21, of Meadowbrook Road, Edison, were found by police in the front seat of a 1999 red Volkswagen.

Bautin was pronounced dead at the scene at 11:27 p.m. only a few hundred feet from the doorstep of his parents’ third-floor apartment, according to the Middlesex County Prosecutor’s Office.

Barbashov died later that night at The University Hospital, Newark.

Bautin, a Russian émigré, who came to the United States more than six years ago, worked full time for TheaterMania in Manhattan. At night he attended classes at Rutgers University, Newark, where he was working toward a computer science degree.

Bautin’s mother, Olga Bautin, said she had no idea why someone would want to murder her son.

"Everything was OK. He had a won­derful new job. He was happy," Bautin said. "He was cheerful all the time and he had a lot of friends. He didn’t have any people around him he didn’t like."

Since his death, Bautin said, friends have filled in some details of what her son did the day of his murder. She said Bautin stopped at The Sports Authority, then had tea with one of his friend’s par­ents. Nothing out of the ordinary or un­usual, she said.

"He was always smiling. He loved me and his father and his brother," Bautin said. "I am distraught and furious that this happened to my son."

Bautin and her family moved from Elmwood Park to the Forest View apart­ments in 1999. She said she had always known it as a safe and quiet neighbor­hood.

"You tell your kids to be safe when they go out. Well, what is safe? You can’t be safe when you’re outside your own front door?" Irene Kainatsky of Mahwah, a longtime friend of the family, said.

"Shock and disbelief, that’s what I’m feeling," Bautin’s friend and Woodbridge resident Vitaly Baksht said. "Right now we can’t even think straight. It’s so tragic."

Shawn Reddy, a neighbor of the Bautins, has lived in the Forest View apartment complex for over a year.

"The only thing I’ve ever heard of happening around here is a friend of mine told me about someone stealing headlights off cars," Reddy said.

"I’m really shocked. I go running here late at night. Obviously I should think be­fore doing that again," Reddy said.

Barbashov worked for an uncle at Olger Motors in Bridgeton. He was un­married with no children.

The Barbashov family could not be reached for comment.

Authorities are still investigating the crime. Anyone with information regard­ing the shootings should contact the Middlesex County Prosecutor’s Office at (732) 745-3300 or the Woodbridge Police Department at (732) 634-7700.

BY COLLEEN LUTOLF

Staff Writer

Authorities continue

to investigate incident

Avenel shootings claim the lives of two local men