SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico, (Reuters) – Three-time world boxing champion Hector “Macho” Camacho is brain dead following a drive-by shooting in Puerto Rico, a doctor said yesterday.
Camacho, 50, whose speed and flamboyance made him a top attraction in the 1980s and 1990s, is in a coma and unresponsive, said Dr. Ernesto Torres, director of the Rio Piedras Medical Center.
Camacho “is clinically brain dead,” Torres told reporters. “The tests showed a flat line, without any type of activity.”
Doctors will meet with his mother, Maria Matias, and other relatives on Friday to discuss options, Torres said. They include removing him from life support and organ donation.
Two gunmen opened fire on Camacho and a friend, Adrian Mojica Moreno, 49, late on Tuesday as they sat in a car outside a liquor store in the San Juan suburb of Bayamon, Camacho’s birthplace. Camacho was hit in the jaw and the bullet fractured two vertebrae and lodged in his shoulder. Torres said the bullet damaged three of the four arteries that carried blood to the brain.
A police spokeswoman said Mojica Moreno was killed and the gunmen fled in a vehicle. Officers found nine small bags of cocaine in the driver’s pockets and one open in the car.
No arrests have been made and the investigation is ongoing, she said.
Ismael Leandry, Camacho’s former manager, called him “a great friend and a great boss.” He blamed a crime wave sweeping Puerto Rico for the shooting.
Camacho “took a ride with a friend who apparently had some problems in the street and got caught up in the shooting. They were not going after Macho,” he said.