A Maryland teenager on a family vacation in Puerto Rico was fatally shot during a fight that also left his uncle and stepfather wounded, authorities said.
Tommy Grays III, 17, was gunned down July 1 on an Isla Verde beach in what local authorities called a “targeted shooting” that took place after an argument, NBC 4 reported.
The suspected gunman, Carlos Aníbal Rosado Martínez, 23, also allegedly shot the teen’s uncle and stepdad, who was struck in the face and remained hospitalized,
Martínez turned himself in on Friday and is facing murder, attempted murder and gun charges.
Officials have said what sparked the deadly argument.
The slain teen’s father, also named Tommy Grays, said the issue had been settled by the time the shooter grabbed his gun.
“My son had actually stopped the situation from happening. He then walked back to the beach and was in the water with his step father when the guy came running back up shooting at them,” Grays told NBC 4.
The grieving father said that people on the island were unfairly making his son out to be the aggressor in the situation.
“My boy was an innocent kid with not a single violent bone in his body. He had never been in a physical fight a day in his life and he lost his life and it is being said he was being violent. It makes no sense,” he added.
The tragic teen was a rising 12th grader at James Hubert Blake High School in Montgomery, Maryland.
“He was so excited about it. And he won’t see his first day as a senior,” his father said.
The boy was the third tourist to be killed in Puerto Rico over the last two months.
His father says efforts to protect the tourism industry on the island have caused locals to blame the visitors for such deadly encounters.
“What is happening is it’s been spun as if the tourist was the aggressor in the situation, and that was not the case at all,” he said.
