A hardworking autistic Bronx man who avoided the subway after a beatdown left him in fear of the city’s transit system was shot to death when he was mugged on his long walk home from his late-night shift at an Amazon warehouse, his heartbroken family says.
Ronell Marte, 26, was nearly done with his 50-minute walk home from his night shift when he cut through Starlight Park to save a little time — only to be confronted by two muggers in the predawn hours of Sept. 4.
“He took a shortcut through the park and, heartbreakingly, he was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and only five minutes away from home,” his sister Nelroby Marte wrote in a GoFundMe that raised more than $1,000 for his funeral services.
“Ronell had been jumped on the train before from an attempted robbery, so walking felt like the safer option to him,” she said.
Responding to a 911 call at 2:49 a.m. police to found Marte with a gunshot wound to the chest and his cell phone stolen inside the park near West Farms Rd. and E. 174th St. in West Farms. Medics rushed Marte to St. Barnabas Hospital, where he died.
“He was the best of our family — the kind of person you wish you could be more like,” his sister wrote.
“Growing up, Ronell faced bullying in middle and high school for seeming a little different, but he never let it harden him or his heart. His heart remained pure and soft, his spirit joyful, and his laugh was so contagious that it could lift you up from your lowest point, making you feel just as joyful as him.”
Cops have arrested two men for Marte’s murder. Axel Martinez, 20, was cuffed on Sept. 18, two weeks after the slaying, while Luis Alberto Lopez Castillo, 19, turned himself in at the 43 Precinct stationhouse on Tuesday.
Both men are charged with murder, manslaughter, robbery and criminal possession of a weapon for acting together to rob Marte before gunning him down and leaving him to die in the secluded Bronx greenspace, cops said.
Lopez Castillo was ordered held without bail during his arraignment in Bronx Criminal Court Tuesday night.
Police say the robbery that ended in Marte’s death was the suspects’ second stickup that day. The armed duo allegedly beat and robbed a 21-year-old man about a mile away on Beach Ave. near the Cross Bronx Expressway at 12:30 a.m.
That man gave up his cell phone and $120 to the crooks but escaped with his life, cops said.
Both men have arrest records, including a July 10 robbery in which Martinez and Lopez Castillo, acting with an accomplice who is still at large, viciously beat a man before taking his phone and wallet on 41st Ave. near Parsons Blvd. in Queens, prosecutors with the Queens District Attorney’s Office said.
Martinez was also apprehended along with three other men after police raided a Bronx apartment on E. 178th St. near Hughes Ave. and found several vials of cocaine and dozens of rounds of .38-caliber ammunition on April 25, court records show.
As the eldest of three siblings, Ronell was the first to go to college, earning an associate’s degree in graphic design from Hostos Community College, his proud sister wrote.
After graduating, Ronell signed up with Amazon, first as a delivery driver and later working in one of the online retail behemoth’s Bronx warehouses, a job he had held down for about three years before he was killed, a cousin told the Daily News.
“He was very hardworking,” said Richard Jean-Baptiste Marte, 28. “He would go straight to work and come back to his family. Never caused any issues.”
“His life was in order. He was heading in the right direction,” the cousin added. “He definitely had a slow start but he would have made it far in life.”
Jean-Baptiste Marte said his cousin appeared younger than his years and was targeted by bullies and crooks as a result, including once while working as an Amazon delivery cyclist. Ronell returned from work that day battered and bruised but with his belongings intact, his cousin said.
“They thought he was a really shy kid, an easy target,” said Jean-Baptiste Marte. “He must have put up a fight because he came back home all bruised up and stuff but he still had everything.”
But it was after a second robbery attempt against Marte aboard an MTA subway train that he decided it was safer to commute by foot than rely on the city’s transit system, his cousin said.
“They tried to rob him and he got into a physical altercation,” Jean-Baptiste Marte said. “He didn’t really like public transportation at that point. He decided walking from his job was the safer bet.”
“It’s kind of crazy. He probably just wanted to get home quick. Starlight (Park) is basically his shortcut to the house. I kind of wish he had just went the long way. That’s a secluded area.”
Ronell Marte’s sudden death has devastated his family.
“His loss has left us shattered,” his sister Nelroby Marte wrote. “Our family is heartbroken, lost, and struggling to comprehend how such a bright light could be taken from this world. Ronell was truly an angel on earth.”
Additional reporting by Thomas Tracy and Sheetal Banchariya
