A New York City teen was confronted at a Jamaica deli and fatally shot because he wore a red jacket, the signature color of the local Bloods gang.
The siblings of Guatemalan migrant Cristobal Alfredo Ixquier Mejia and all those who knew him insisted the 19-year-old had nothing to do with local gangs but liked to wear red clothes.
“My brother wasn’t in any type of group or gang,” the teen’s older brother Antonio Rolando Ixquier Mejia said.
Cristobal was drinking at a deli just before 10 p.m. Friday when two men approached him and asked about his red jacket. One of the men was wearing blue, which is the typical color for The Crips, Bloods’ rivals, to wear.
“The guy just punched my brother,” the victim’s other sibling said. “He had a pistol and then he shot my brother. We ran to the park, shouting for the police.”
The clerk at the Jamaica deli where Cristobal was ambushed described him and his two siblings as “good people.”
“They’re good kids. I don’t have any problem with them. They come here once in a while. It’s unfortunate what happened, maybe something was lost in translation.”
Antonio Lenares, 50, who is a manager at the car wash where Cristobal worked, corroborated the clerk’s statement but recalled warning the teen about his favorite color’s meaning in Queens.
“He always had a red T-shirt. I told him don’t wear that one. People might get confused. He didn’t have a long time in the country.”
