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Man Who Lived In Attic Killed On San Pedro
posted (April 28, 2014)
And while those are the late breaking details of that double fatality on the Western Highway, we have two murders to report tonight.

The first one happened at around 11:30 p.m. on Saturday night, where 43 year-old Dennis Palacio was killed in a street-style execution on San Pedro.

Police have no leads at this time, and are hoping that members of the public come forward to assist them in their investigation. But while that is the aftermath of Palacio's murder, our news team went out to the island to find out what may have motivated it in the first place. Daniel Ortiz reports:

Daniel Ortiz reporting
At about half hour before Midnight on Saturday, 43 year-old Dennis Palacio, aka "Chingy", was killed on Seaweed Street in the San Juan area.

A gunman ambushed and shot Palacio while he was leaning on the fence at the entrance of this unknown alley.

Neighbors say that Palacio tried to flee into this yard, where the gunman chased him down and shot him 3 more times in the back. That's where the police came and retrieved his lifeless body, about 5 minutes later.

One resident from the alley, who Palacio socialized with regularly, said he saw him alive a few hours before he was killed.

Guillermo Diaz - Friend of the Deceased
"I was out there and they came and tell me that they just shoot the man. I saw him walking drinking in the evening before he went out, he was happy - just like that."

Palacio, who is originally from Maskall Village, struggled with life on San Pedro. When he first moved into the alley, he slept in the this attic.

It was hardly any shelter from the occasional bad weather and that's what made Diaz and his girlfriend show him a little bit of kindness.

They gave him this little room to stay rent free, which he used up until Saturday, when he met his death.

That's a big part of the reason why his friends don't believe that he was killed in a robbery. They say that the little cash that he had was because he sold a little weed, here and there.

Guillermo Diaz - Friend of the Deceased
"He always use to sell his little weed, but that is not a reason just to die like that."

He developed a reputation as a minor drug peddler in the San Juan area, and so, he had a few run ins with officers from the Anti-Drug Unit who didn't like his influence in the area.

Guillermo Diaz - Friend of the Deceased
"I heard that they (the police) told the man to roll to his village, they don't want to see him here and he was surviving just like that. He has to survive, he has to do something."

Despite that enterprise, Diaz says that Palacio shouldn't have been executed so ruthlessly.

Guillermo Diaz - Friend of the Deceased
"It doesn't matter if he does wrong things or something but he is a human being, he can't die just like that. Naturally you just can't kill a person; he is a human being, he is not a dog."

Residents of the San Juan area lament that this area of San Pedro has become very active with crime and violence. Last week Thursday night, 2 days before Palacio was killed, there was another shooting in the area.

It happened at around 9 p.m., and the San Pedro Sun reports that residents had to flee for their lives when gunshots rang out.

Residents told the island newspaper that 6 gunmen dressed in full black, wearing bandanas on their faces, came from the mangrove area along the lagoon side. The men then pulled out several guns and aimed them towards a group of men sitting on golf carts parked in front of the Campos residence, located on Caniste Street. No one was injured, and after the men unloaded their weapons, they reportedly jumped into a waiting vessel and fled the scene. 12 expended 9mm shells were recovered.

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