Reuters/San Juan, Puerto Rico
Three-time world boxing champion Hector “Macho” Camacho (Pictured) died yesterday, four days after he was shot in the face in a drive-by shooting, doctors said. He was 50.
Camacho was pronounced dead after being taken off life support following a second heart attack early yesterday morning, Rio Piedras Medical Director Ernesto Torres told reporters.
Puerto Rico officials planned a public wake for the boxer at the Department of Sports & Recreation headquarters in San Juan, but details were pending.
The former US boxing champ had been declared brain dead on Thursday after he was shot on Tuesday while sitting in a car with a friend, Adrian Mojica Moreno, 49, outside a liquor store in the San Juan suburb of Bayamon, Camacho’s birthplace.
Two gunmen opened fire on the car, killing the driver, Mojica Moreno, and hitting Camacho in the jaw. The bullet fractured two vertebrae and lodged in his shoulder, damaging the arteries that carried blood to the brain, doctors said.
Police found nine small bags of cocaine in the driver’s pockets and one open in the car.
The shooting is under investigation and no arrests have been made.
Camacho, a left-handed fighter who grew up in New York’s Spanish Harlem neighborhood, had a record of 79-6-3 with 38 knockouts. His three-decade career featured fights with a “who’s who” of boxing and a flamboyant style that included entering the ring in an outfit based on the Puerto Rican flag.