The 22-year-old man gunned down at a Bronx barbecue late Saturday night was a Honduran immigrant from New Orleans in town visiting family, his brother said Sunday.
Joseph Sanchez, 22, had gone to Claremont Park to celebrate Honduran independence with friends when a fight broke out and shots were fired shortly after 11 p.m., brother Daniel Espinoza, also 22, told The Post.
“He came all the way from New Orleans to pass time with the family,” Espinoza said.
Espinoza was at the park when the gunshots broke out near Teller Avenue and East 172nd Street — but had lost track of Sanchez. He said he heard eight or nine shots, then fled with the rest of the crowd. When he returned, he found out his brother had been killed.
“I heard the shots and I saw people running and I started running, too,” he said. “They were shooting like crazy. Everybody trying to save their lives.”
Espinoza said he typically avoids the park in the middle of the Claremont section — despite living in the neighborhood — and was only there because his brother had told him to come.
“There are a lot of people there trying to make trouble with somebody. When you don’t do nothing, they try to have so many problems with you,” he said.
Espinoza and Sanchez are two of three brothers living in the US, and Espinoza traveled from New Jersey on Saturday to see him. He said their parents back in Honduras “are crying.”
“When somebody kills your son, they are going feel it, they are going to feel it bad,” he said. “I’m going to miss my brother a lot. He was my brother. He was my blood.”