Former Boxing Champ, Hector Camacho, Shot In The Face In Puerto Rico

[admin]

Former world boxing champion Hector 'Macho' Camacho was shot in the face as he sat in a car outside the Puerto Rican capital yesterday.

Doctors said he was in serious condition but is expected to survive.

Another man in the car, whose relationship to the 50-year-old Camacho wasn't immediately known, died in the attack in which at least one gunman opened fire on their vehicle in the city of Bayamon, according to a statement from police.

Camacho was rushed to Centro Medico, the trauma center in San Juan, where he was in critical but stable condition, Dr. Ernesto Torres, the hospital director, told reporters.

The bullet apparently struck him in the jaw but exited his head and lodged in his right shoulder and fractured two vertebrae, Torres said.

The doctor said the boxer, who was trailed by drug and alcohol problems during a career that included some high-profile bouts, could be paralyzed from the shooting.

'Camacho's condition is extremely delicate,' he told Telenoticias. 'His physical condition will help him but we will see.'

No arrests have been made in the shooting, police said.

Camacho representative Steve Tannenbaum said he was told by friends at the hospital that the boxer would make it.

'This guy is a cat with nine lives. He's been through so much,' he said. 'If anybody can pull through it will be him.'

The fighter's last title bout came against then-welterweight champion Oscar De La Hoya in 1997, a loss by unanimous decision.

Tannenbaum said he was going to fight two years ago in Denmark until his opponent pulled out and that they were looking at a possible bout in 2013.

'We were talking comeback even though he is 50,' he said. 'I felt he was capable of it.'

Camacho was born in Bayamon, one of the cities that make up the San Juan metropolitan area. He won super lightweight, lightweight and junior welterweight world titles in the 1980s.

Camacho has fought other high-profile bouts in his career against Felix Trinidad, Julio Cesar Chavez and Sugar Ray Leonard.

Camacho knocked out Leonard in 1997, ending what was that former champ's final comeback attempt.

Camacho has a career record of 79-5-3, with his most recent fight coming in 2009.

Drug, alcohol and other problems have trailed Camacho since the prime of his boxing career.

He was sentenced in 2007 to seven years in prison for the burglary of a computer store in Mississippi.

While arresting him on the burglary charge in January 2005, police also found the drug ecstasy.

A judge eventually suspended all but one year of the sentence and gave Camacho probation. He wound up serving two weeks in jail, though, after violating that probation.

Twice his wife filed domestic abuse complaints against him, and she filed for divorce several years ago.

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[Gimmick856]

Poor bastard is brain dead, and the family is hemming and hawing about taking him off life support.

With his past, you gotta figure it was a drug deal gone bad or that he was acting as muscle for the other guy.

[admin]

kinda late posting this

RIP Hector Camacho - Camacho died November 24, 2012, after being taken off life support.

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (Reuters) - Three-time world boxing champion Hector "Macho" Camacho died on Saturday, 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 Saturday 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 U.S. 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 said they 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.

Camacho's body was taken to the hospital's pathology section and brought to the Institute of Forensic Sciences as required by law, Torres told reporters.

The family planned a funeral in New York, El Nuevo Dia newspaper reported.

Family members had debated removing him from life support, with some including his son Hector "Machito" Camacho holding out hope for his recovery.

On Friday evening, his mother, Maria Matias, told reporters at the medical center that "God has taken him" and that she was waiting for Camacho's other children to arrive in Puerto Rico before having him disconnected.

Camacho Jr. lamented the crime and violence in Puerto Rico. "You have to stop the violence and the drugs. Rap singers have to stop glorifying violence. This is for the youth. All the street promises them now is death, drugs and jail."

(Reporting by Reuters in San Juan; Editing by Barbara Goldberg, Sandra Maler and Xavier Briand)