Hector “Macho” Camacho, a Puerto Rican boxer known for skill and flamboyance in the ring as well as for a messy personal life and run-ins with the police, was declared dead on Saturday, four days after being shot in the face. He was 50.
Hector “Macho” Camacho, a former world champion boxer, died this Saturday at the hospital in Puerto Rico where he has been unconscious since he was shot in the face in an attack in his hometown.
Camacho, 50, went into cardiac arrest in the pre-dawn hours and he was then taken off life support and died shortly thereafter, said Dr Ernesto Torres, the director of the Centro Medico trauma center in San Juan.
The boxer was known for his skill and flamboyance in the ring as well as for a messy personal life and run-ins with the police out of it.
Camacho’s mother, Maria Matias, said on Friday night that she had supported removing him from life support after his three sons arrived from the US mainland yo see their father for the last time.
They managed to visit him before he died, said former professional boxer Victor “Luvi” Callejas, a longtime friend. “The family is destroyed,” Callejas said outside the hospital.
Camacho was shot as he sat in a car with a friend, 49-year-old Adrian Mojica Moreno, who was killed in the attack.
Police spokesman Alex Diaz said officers found nine small bags of cocaine in the friend’s pocket and a 10th bag open inside the car.
Police reported no arrests and said investigators continued to look for potential witnesses.
Captain Rafael Rosa told reporters they were following several leads, but declined to say whether police had identified any suspects. He said very few witnesses were cooperating.
Hector Camacho Jr decried the violence that grips Puerto Rico, a US. island territory of nearly four million people that reported a record 1,117 homicides last year.
This is a big loss for the boxing world. Camacho battled drug, alcohol and other problems throughout his life. He was sentenced in 2007 to seven years in prison on burglary charges, but a judge eventually suspended all but one year of the sentence and gave Camacho probation.
He wound up serving two weeks in jail after violating that probation. A wife also filed domestic abuse complaints against him twice before their divorce.