A pair of Brooklyn shootings that left two men dead and a third clinging to life was sparked by an ongoing Venezuelan gang war, police sources said Wednesday.
The two back-to-back Sunday shootings, one in a park and one outside a migrant shelter, happened just two blocks and seven minutes apart in Clinton Hill. Witnesses told police that a four-door sedan followed by two men on a moped were spotted at each scene before bullets started flying.
The slayings took place amid growing tensions between the Venezuelan-based Tren de Aragua and an offshoot gang known as Anti-Tren, the sources said.
The first shooting took place at the Steuben Playground near Flushing Ave. and Steuben St. at 10:44 p.m., cops said. The victim, identified as Arturo Jose Rodriguez Marcano, was shot twice in the chest and was rushed to New York-Presbyterian Brooklyn Methodist Hospital, where he died. Rodriguez-Marcano was homeless, cops say.
Two shell casings were recovered at the scene.
Seven minutes later, the same sedan and moped were seen passing a shelter for migrants on Ryerson St. near Park Ave., where 21-year-old Enny de Jesus Urbina Mendez and a 59-year-old man were standing.
The passenger on the moped jumped off, shot at both men and jumped back on the moped, which sped off.
Mendez suffered gunshot wounds all over his body and died at Bellevue Hospital. The 59-year-old man blasted in the head was taken to New York-Presbyterian Brooklyn Methodist Hospital, where he remains in critical condition.
“The 59-year-old guy had nothing to do with it. He only sit down drinking and enjoying,” one witness, who only wanted to be identified as Angel, told the Daily News Sunday. “There were two guys on motorcycles with masks on. It’s scary.”
The moped sped off and crashed near the corner of Park Ave. and Taaffe Place about six blocks from the shooting.
The gunman ran off but the operator of the moped was seriously injured and hospitalized, cops said. No charges were immediately filed against the hospitalized suspect.
Investigators managed to recover surveillance video of the shooter. They released the images late Monday and asked anyone with information on his identity or whereabouts to come forward.
Mendez is a Venezuelan national who came into the U.S. about a year ago through San Diego. Since moving to the city, he has been arrested repeatedly for shoplifting, mostly in Manhattan, cops said.
The hospitalized man who was operating the moped is a Venezuelan migrant who came to the U.S. about a month ago, police sources said.
Beginning as a prison gang in Aragua, Venezuela, Tren de Aragua has quickly become a transnational criminal organization that is expanding throughout the Western Hemisphere, according to the U.S. Department of Treasury.
The gang is known for human smuggling and sex trafficking as well as money laundering and drug dealing.
Last month, Bernardo Raul Castro Mata, who was arrested for shooting two Queens police officers after being caught zipping the wrong way down a one-way Queens street on a scooter, admitted to authorities he is a member Tren de Aragua. He told authorities it wasn’t a big deal for gang members and police in his native country to shoot at each other.
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