Two Held in Fatal Shooting On Streets of Hell’s Kitchen

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The New York Sun

A porter at a Manhattan bar was killed yesterday just blocks from his workplace in an early morning shooting in Hell’s Kitchen, police said.

Fauzto Lopez, 40, was shot at least twice at about 4:30 a.m. at the intersection of Ninth Avenue and West 48th Street. Neighbors and witnesses reported multiple gunshots fired, police said. He was pronounced dead at St. Vincent’s Hospital.

Police and witnesses said Lopez was crossing Ninth Avenue when two men approached and shot him several times. “First, he shot him in the back,” one witness, Cruz Vasquez, 25, said. Then, as Lopez lay face down on the street, the assailant “shot him in the head,” Mr. Vasquez said.

Mr. Vasquez said the suspects fled, only to be apprehended a block away by police. Police said officers responding to the scene apprehended Anthony Reed, 27, and Larry Campbell, 31, both of the Bronx. Police recovered a 9-millimeter gun at the scene. As of last night, charges were pending.

According to police, both men have prior arrest records. The state’s Department of Correctional Services records indicate Reed served five years in prison after being convicted in 2000 of second-degree attempted murder and second-degree arson. He was released on parole in April 2005.

While police did not disclose a motive in yesterday’s shooting, they said the suspects were involved in another altercation earlier in the night. Police said Reed was injured in that dispute, requiring bandages to his head.

Yesterday, some speculated that Lopez was not the intended target.

“He was a family guy who worked every day,” a bartender at the Ninth Avenue Saloon, where Lopez worked as a porter for at least six years, Paul Holditch, said. “He didn’t have time to get in trouble … it seems very random.”

Mr. Holditch guessed that Lopez was headed toward the bar, on Ninth Avenue and West 46th Street, when he was shot. He typically arrived before 5 a.m. to clean the premises.

Reached by telephone at her home in Elmhurst, Lopez’s companion of five years, Gloria Huero, 39, confirmed that Lopez was headed to work early yesterday. She said through a translator that Lopez worked two jobs — at the Ninth Avenue bar and at a deli on West 79th Street — to support their two children, as well as two children from her previous relationship. “He was the one who took care of the family and the four kids,” a friend who rented Lopez a room before he moved in with Ms. Huero, Adelaida Manzano, 35, said.

Meanwhile, longtime residents of the neighborhood gathered in shock yesterday on sidewalks around the crime scene, as detectives collected evidence in brown paper bags. A resident who said he called 911 when he heard more than 10 shots last night admitted he was shaken up. “I never heard gunshots before in my life, but I knew what it was,” Michael Braun, 23, said.

In large part, residents said the area had become increasingly violent with a recent influx of new nightclubs. “You read about this stuff,” Anders Mikkelsen, of West 47th Street, said, “but this is the worst thing I ever heard of here.”


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