A 30-year-old man was killed when a gunman unloaded on him and an older man at point-blank range in Brooklyn, leaving the younger man’s 6-year-old daughter fatherless, the victim’s family told the Daily News.
Jose “Elias” Urena Moran and a 50-year-old man were shot multiple times outside a restaurant on Fulton St. near Cleveland St. in Cypress Hills at about 5:50 p.m., cops said.
“He was a great father,” Urena Moran’s cousin, 20-year-old Melina Reyes, told The News. “(His little girl) loves her dad. She was a big daddy’s girl.”
Startling surveillance video obtained by News 12 Brooklyn shows the killer walking up to the victims on the sidewalk after an argument. He pulls a gun and shoots them multiple times at close range. Both victims drop to the sidewalk.
“It’s ridiculous for you to have an argument with somebody and shoot them,” said Reyes. “There’s no sympathy. There’s no heart. It’s crazy.”
The killer tucks the weapon away and walks off. He steps into the street, walking right past a police car pulling up. Shocked bystanders point in his direction, alerting the cops, the video shows.
“It happened so fast,” said Al Sensei, 67, who lives down the street from the scene and heard the gunfire.
“When I heard the pop, like ‘ta, ta, ta, ta, ta,’ I thought it was construction, but then I heard a lot of commotion … I know it was an automatic gun. Definitely it wasn’t a revolver.”
“I looked down from my apartment window,’ he added. “I saw the commotion … I saw the ambulance, so I thought somebody really got hurt.”
Medics rushed both men to Brookdale University Hospital, where Urena Moran died.
The other victim is in critical condition, an NYPD spokesperson said.
Michael Mendoza Cardona, 24, was taken into custody at the scene and later charged with murder and weapon possession, cops said.
“He was struggling and everything, but they had him on his back,” Sensei said of the man taken into custody. “Then the other cops came, and they put him in handcuffs.”
Mendoza Cardona is a Honduran national currently living about half a mile from the crime scene, according to police sources. His arraignment was pending in Brooklyn Criminal Court.
Urena Moran lived in the neighborhood about a mile away from where he was shot. It was not immediately clear if the victims knew each other or the gunman, police said.
A memorial for the victim — known to friends as “Buffalo” — was set up outside the restaurant where he was shot, as more than a dozen votive candles burned in his memory.
“He was a good guy. He’s a real, genuine person. He was a loving person,” a friend of the victim’s, who asked to remain anonymous, told The News at the memorial. “He was a caring, protective person. Just a good person overall.”
“He was ride or die,” the friend added.
The victim ran a window repair business and had recently moved to New York City from Pennsylvania, where his daughter and her mother live. Urena Moran’s little girl remained unaware of her dad’s death Monday night, with Reyes saying “she is too little” to hear the tragic news.
“He was very protective over family,” the victim’s cousin said. “That’s the main thing. He did not play about his family or his friends.”
Reyes said her slain cousin was “like a brother” and that she would miss “his fun spirit.”
“He was funny. He loved his family a lot,” said Reyes. “He was very loyal.”
