Hispanic man fatally stabbed after getting out of taxi in Queens to see if taco shop was open

A construction worker and immigrant was stabbed to death on a Queens street after jumping out of the cab he was sharing with his girlfriend to see if his favorite taco place was open, his family said.

Authorities were called at approximately 3 a.m. Saturday to New York-Presbyterian Hospital in Queens, where 29-year-old Maurico Bravo Quinones died by private means. Detectives quickly determined that he had been stabbed multiple times throughout the body in the vicinity of 31st Ave. and 92nd St. in Jackson Heights.

The victim’s brother, Anibal Bravo, 32, said his brother and his girlfriend were heading home when they stopped to get tacos, but the store appeared to be closed.

Quiñones got out of the taxi to confirm this and was confronted on the street. His girlfriend wanted to get out to help him, but the taxi driver, frightened, locked the doors and took her home, Bravo explained. She called some colleagues in the area to help her and soon after found out that she had stabbed him several times.

Bravo said he could not imagine who would have wished his brother dead, the Daily News reported.

“I have no idea,” he said. “I just know that the detectives told us it was gang-related. I say, ‘How is it going to be gang-related, other than they got confused and chased them here?’”

The brother was with family members at an improvised memorial for Quiñones on Sunday at the spot where he was attacked.

The victim planned to one day start his own construction company “so he could hire people and help his friends or anyone who needed work,” Bravo said.

So far the police have not captured the person or persons responsible for the deadly crime.

“Eventually they will catch him and things will work out,” Bravo predicted.

The Hispanic man’s death marks the second murder of 2024 in the 115th district, where there were four homicides in all of 2023, according to statistics from the New York Police Department (NYPD).

Keep reading:

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• Hispanic man sentenced to 50 years in prison for killing his cousin in New York