A man shot to death in the Bronx three years after making headlines fleeing a chain-reaction crash that injured 20 people was a lovable con artist who didn’t live long enough to straighten out his life, a devastated relative says.
Jonathan Valentin, 29, was shot in the chest outside an apartment building on Haviland Ave. near the Cross Bronx Expressway in Castle Hill about 12:15 a.m. May 24. No arrests have been made.
“It wasn’t a stray bullet,” said Valentin’s uncle, who asked not to be named. “He comes from a really good family and he just decided to take the path of the streets. That’s really the truth.”
Valentin’s family says he was in a confrontation over $60,000 he owed to someone he ran a bad checks scam with when he sparked the 2023 hit-and-run crash, which he went to jail for after he was caught.
Valentin was arguing with the occupants of a white Mercedes at a Citgo gas station on W. 204th St. and Broadway in Inwood when he sparked the crash about 9:00 p.m. Jan. 2, 2023, police say.
“I asked him directly, ‘Why did you drive like a maniac? What caused people to come after you?’” Valentin’s uncle recalled. “He told me word for word, ‘I did a scam with somebody and they did me wrong so when it was time for me to give them their 50% I kept it.’”
In video viewed by the Daily News of the start of the 2023 crash, the Mercedes pulled into the parking lot and a passenger got out to confront Valentin in his white Audi.
Valentin stepped on the gas and peeled out of the parking lot. He then crashed into an Uber, causing that driver to plow through the front of Inwood Bar and Grill, which was packed with customers, prosecutors said.
Kerry Burke / New York Daily News
A Toyota Rav4 mounted the sidewalk after being struck by another vehicle and rammed into a restaurant on Broadway and West 104th Street in Manhattan on Jan. 2, 2023. (Kerry Burke / New York Daily News)
Among the 20 people injured in the chain reaction crash were the Uber driver, a 1-year-old who suffered a broken foot and an 11-year-old girl whose right leg had to be amputated.
“He came very fast and he hit me on the side,” the Uber driver, Sory Toure, said at the time. “I lost control. I had the light and he came from the gas station. When he hit me, I went up on the sidewalk.”
“He hit me and ran away,” Toure added. “I thought my life was over.”
Courtesy of family
Jonathan Valentin (right) with his siblings. (Courtesy of family)
Valentin, whose license was already revoked in New York at the time, fled the scene to New Jersey. The Mercedes driver also sped off.
The law caught up with Valentin three months later.
He was indicted in April 2023 for leaving the scene of a crash, 10 counts of assault and other vehicle and traffic law violations. He was sentenced to six months in jail, according to prosecutors.
“When he was incarcerated, he would call me and he was very humble. He would say, ‘When I come out, I’m gonna change,’” Valentin’s uncle said. “As soon as he came out, he went back to the money — and got lost to the point where he disconnected from the family. I saw red flags and I called him out. I couldn’t pull him away from it. He was chasing his money.”
The uncle said Valentin feared for his life in the weeks leading up to his death.
“He was in danger. He knew that they were looking for him,” his uncle said. “He told his girlfriend and he told another girl. He told everyone. I wish he would have told me because I would’ve maybe told him to go into hiding.”
An NYPD source said cops are aware of Valentin’s past as a scam artist but have not established a motive in his killing as they continue to investigate.
Valentin was shot near a tattoo parlor where he had been getting work done on a tattoo depicting “The Last Supper” across his chest. He was taken by private means to St. Barnabas Hospital, where he died.
The uncle awoke to a phone call at 1:30 a.m.
“Those are the phone calls you never want to get,” he said. “I saw him in a body bag. The hardest part is to visualize him. It was just tough … His eyes were sort of semi-open and then I opened them.”
Valentin leaves behind his mother, who he lived with in Maywood, N.J., and a young daughter.
His uncle says it was Valentin’s upbringing and the absence of his father that ultimately led him down the wrong path.
At the beginning of his short life, Valentin’s family home in the Bronx, where he lived with his mother, her siblings and his grandmother, went up in flames.
“We escaped the house and I remember throwing Jonathan out the window when he was an infant and a homeless man — the local crackhead, I have to be honest with you — caught him,” the uncle said. “We survived.”
Julian Roberts-Grmela / New York Daily News
A memorial for Jonathan Valentin is seen near the scene of his murder on May 24. (Julian Roberts-Grmela / New York Daily News)
After losing their home, the family bounced around from shelter to shelter until Valentin was about 5 and they moved into an apartment in the Bronx.
It was Valentin’s maternal grandmother who mostly raised him after he was diagnosed with ADD at a young age, the uncle said.
“He kind of ended up being raised with no rules and no parameters,” he said. “He didn’t necessarily go to school. His grandmother couldn’t be the man to push him. He had no fear.”
“There was nothing evil about him,” he added. “It was just constantly getting into trouble. He never learned to channel his energy into something positive.”
The uncle hoped to get Valentin a job repairing excavators and trucks through friends of his but it never panned out.
“I kind of predicted his death,” he said. “I told my mother, his grandmother, ‘He’s going down the wrong path, he’s either gonna become dead or in prison.’”
Courtesy of family
Jonathan Valentin, left, is pictured as a baby with his uncle. (Courtesy of family)
In a text exchange just five days before Valentin was murdered, the uncle sent him an old photo of the two of them in a homeless shelter when Valentin was still a baby.
“‘I want you to realize that every time you put yourself at risk, you risk what me, your mom, and grandma created to have the little bit that we have accumulated over time. I understand you want to rise and shine,’” he wrote. “But this is not the right way. If you get caught, you will be back where you started in a cell.’”
The uncle said Valentin brushed the message off.
“He comes from a family that wanted the best for him. He didn’t know how to be a productive member of society,” he said. “I don’t know if he would have gotten better at 30, 40. I don’t know.”
“I love my nephew infinitely,” he added. “I tried to control him but I couldn’t figure out how to do it … He’s still my blood. No one has a right to take him away. No matter what.”
With Rocco Parascandola
