6 Killed in Shootout as Violence Rattles Puerto Rican Capital
Two shootings during the long holiday weekend in San Juan had people worried about a rash of drug violence and other crime.
SAN JUAN, P.R. — The terrifying storm of gunfire broke out in the dark on Monday, piercing the early evening calm at a public housing complex near the University of Puerto Rico with hundreds of loud shots. Women screamed and dogs barked. After it was over, five people lay dead. A sixth person who was injured later died.
The shootout, its piercing sound captured on videos that were widely shared on social media, unnerved people in San Juan, the Puerto Rican capital, where the authorities have faced a rash of drug crime and other violence. The mass shooting on Monday, a holiday, came a day after two men were gunned down in broad daylight on the side of a busy highway in front of another public housing complex in what the police suspect was a drug-related double murder.
AHORA: 5 muertos y 3 heridos en masacre esta noche en Residencial Ernesto Ramos Antonini en San Juan. Via @RicardoEladiopic.twitter.com/oeDrxfKJpp
& CaribNews (@caribnews) October 15, 2019
Gov. Wanda Vázquez called for an urgent meeting of public safety administrators on Tuesdayto review the violence over the long weekend and address broader concerns about the island’s stubbornly high crime rate, much of it attributed to gang violence.
On Tuesday morning, more than 12 hours after the shooting at the Ernesto Ramos Antonini housing complex in the Río Piedras neighborhood, the bodies of five of the people killed — four men and one woman — remained covered on the ground outside as the police gathered evidence on the scene. The bodies were removed by early afternoon.
The police had recovered more than 1,000 bullet casings of different calibers, including long guns, suggesting links to the drug trade, Lt. José Cruz, director of the San Juan Criminal Investigations Bureau’s homicide division, told El Nuevo Día, Puerto Rico’s largest daily newspaper.
Henry Escalera, the police commissioner, told reporters that the shooting began shortly after 6:30 p.m. when a group of assailants arrived at the complex carrying long guns. The gunmen killed three men at a plaza in front of one building and another man and a woman some distance away.
The plaza had, at least at one point, been a local spot to buy drugs, according to Lt. Cruz, though the police have not yet determined whether the shooting was drug-related. One video showed several people wearing dark clothes shooting, muzzle flashes everywhere, and driving away in a pair of white cars.
Law enforcement officials identified the victims as Emmanuel Enrique Báez Padilla, 43; Jordan Junior Castillo Cordero, 25; Ángel Henríquez Agosto, 21; Kathia Matos Sandoval, 26; Alexis Antonio Padilla Rodríguez, 21, and Ermes Omar Sanjurjo, 25. Mr. Padilla Rodríguez died Tuesday at the hospital. Mr. Henríquez Agosto had an outstanding federal warrant in connection with a morning shooting on Jan. 6 in which a man was killed in front of a nightclub in Isla Verde, near the San Juan airport.
On Sunday, Juan A. La Luz Pizarro, 50, and Carlos D. Pérez Rosado, 52, were killed next to the Rafael Martínez Nadal highway in Guaynabo, west of San Juan. A chilling video of the shooting showed a man firing into a white S.U.V., which then rolled back after its occupants had apparently been incapacitated. The gunman and at least one other man then fled in a white car. Both victims had criminal records, the local news media reported: Mr. Pérez Rosado on drug charges, and Mr. La Luz Pizarro on weapons charges.
In June, three people were beaten to death in the municipality of Cayey, and three people were killed and six injured in a shooting in the municipality of Ciales. Last month, one person died and four were injured in a lengthy shootout in the Puerta de Tierra neighborhood nearOld San Juan.
Mr. Escalera, the police commissioner, said the murder rate on the island remains lower than it was in 2018. Earlier this year, Douglas Leff, the special agent in charge of the Federal Bureau of Investigation in San Juan, warned of a “crisis of violence” and asked for additional resources for Puerto Rico.
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