SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico, (Reuters) – Doctors treating Hector “Macho” Camacho for a gunshot wound to the face and neck said the three-time world boxing champion suffered a heart attack early today and his prognosis was “very poor.”
“This is the toughest fight in the life of Macho Camacho,” Ernesto Torres, director of the Rio Piedras Medical Center, said in a news conference this morning.
Camacho was gravely injured in a drive-by shooting in Puerto Rico on Tuesday night. Torres said that Camacho suffered a heart attack at 4:15 a.m. today.
“There has not been any improvement,” Torres said. “His heart has stopped working. We can give him medicine and his heart will pump again. There is brain activity, but very low. The neurological equipment is not being used. Right now, we can’t do anything,” Torres said.
“We are keeping him alive with medicine. He is a strong guy. We can maintain him several days like this to see if there is an improvement. Macho’s situation is very delicate. The prognosis is very poor,” Torres said.
Camacho, 50, was a passenger in a car driven by his lifelong friend, Alberto Yamil Mojica. They were sitting in a parked car outside a bar when someone opened fire on them, killing the driver. Camacho was shot in the jaw by a bullet that fractured two vertebrae and lodged in his shoulder, doctors said.
The shooting occurred near a popular shopping mall on Highway 167 in Bayamon, a suburban town west of the capital of San Juan.
Police have yet to make arrests or determine a motive in the attack.
Camacho had a stellar professional career with 79 wins and only 6 defeats, including bouts with welterweight champions Oscar De La Hoya and Felix Trinidad, as well as Roberto Duran, Julio Cesar Chavez and Sugar Ray Leonard.
He dealt with drug and alcohol problems during his career and was briefly jailed on charges relating to a burglary in Mississippi in 2005.
In 2010, Camacho participated in the popular Univision network TV show “Mira Quien Baila,” the Spanish language version of Dancing with the Stars.
