NYC man killed in Puerto Rico for Bad Bunny concert was hit by stray-bullet — and cops have arrested intended target: local report
Kenneth Giovanni Estrada Melendez is believed to have been the intended target of gunmen who opened fire inside a bar near Old San Juan on Sunday, killing 25-year-old Queens resident Kevin Mares, local reports said.
Melendez, 27, was picked up on a drug warrant after fleeing the scene, Puerto Rico's El Vocero reported.
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Mares, who was on vacation with his longtime girlfriend, was at the bar, called El Refugio Para Hombres Maltratados — Spanish for 'the refuge for mistreated men' — in the downtrodden neighborhood of La Perla when a scuffle resulted in gunfire shortly before 4:15 a.m., the outlet said.
3
Luiz C. Ribeiro for New York Post
According to police, it was Melendez who was being targeted when Mares and two other bystanders were hit.
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Mares was pronounced dead at a local hospital while the other two — identified in local reports as siblings Miguel and Keila Melendez Beltran, 46 and 46, respectively — were expected to survive.
According to the news outlet El Nuevo Dia, Melendez, who is related to the two wounded victims, was sought on a warrant for a 2022 drug sale to an undercover cop.
3 Kevin Mares, 25, planned to propose to longtime girlfriend Angy Nicole Arguello before he was shot and killed.
Instagram/angy.arguello
3 Kevin Mares was at a bar in the La Perla neighborhood near Old San Juan when he was killed by a stray bullet.
Bloomberg via Getty Images
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Police investigating the fatal shooting tracked him down in the La Trocha neighborhood in Vega Baja around noon on Monday, the outlet reported.
Cops have not identified the suspected shooter and it is unclear what sparked the beef between Melendez and the gunman that led to Mares' killing.
Mares was on the Caribbean island with Angy Nicole Arguello — his girlfriend of seven years, whom he had been planning on proposing to — to attend the popular rapper's performance, according to reports.
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His stray-bullet death has left his family devastated.
'It's very hard,' his father, Hector Mares, told The Post Monday. 'We're still in pain. He was a beautiful person.'
The family launched a GoFundMe.org page is seeking donations to bring their loved one's body home to the Big Apple.
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