A 21-year-old man fatally shot in the back of the head outside his Bronx apartment had just moved there with his girlfriend a week earlier, despite warnings from friends about violence in the neighborhood, his girlfriend said.
Axl Ortiz, a dialysis technician with no criminal record, had no real connections to the Bronx, said his devastated girlfriend, who watched in horror as the cold gunman approached Ortiz from behind and shot him in the head Monday evening at about 7 p.m. outside their new home on E. 187th Street near Webster Ave. in Belmont.
“We just moved here, not even a week ago. Even before I moved, somebody was telling me you shouldn’t move there, it’s a bad neighborhood,” said the 22-year-old woman, who lived with Ortiz and her 5-year-old son. “Every day you hear gunshots, another shooting. It was just me and him, and my son. It was the only apartment that we could find at the moment. It’s hard.”
The shooter remained at large Thursday.
The girlfriend, who wished not to be named, believes the shooter may have been targeting the wrong man since Ortiz was so new to the neighborhood.
“He grew up in Queens; he doesn’t know anybody in the Bronx,” she said.
“He had to be mistaking him for someone else,” she said of the gunman. “To walk up to someone and shoot them in the back of the head. Axl was facing towards the house, That’s what I thought, “We only came back to the house for a second to grab something.”
The woman’s child wasn’t with them when the shooting occurred, she said.
Surveillance video of the violent attack shows Ortiz standing on the sidewalk when the gunman approaches from behind and opens fire.
Cops said Ortiz was rushed to St. Barnabas Hospital, where he died.
Hours later, crime scene tape surrounded Ortiz’ hat where he fell.
Ortiz’ girlfriend said the gunman never said a word.
“His face was out and everything,” she said. “The picture they showed me was kind of blurry. He was wearing a black hoodie, black sweatpants, and he had a mustache.”
She said she signed a lease for a year, but wants to break it and leave because she doesn’t want to live there anymore.
The girlfriend said she and Ortiz had talked about getting married.
“I met him at his job. He works at a dialysis place. He’s a technician. They draw blood, they do everything. I was there helping out somebody to do a job and he was there, she said.
“He worked 90 hours a week. Six days a week. He would work from five in the morning, sometimes 8 o’clock at night.”
She said they have been together for about two years, and that he was helping to raise her son as his own.
“I haven’t told him yet,” she said.
She said Ortiz wasn’t the type to bother anybody.
“All he did was work and come home and help me with my son,” she said. “He was a family person. He was quiet, He was always happy. He was always caring. He was a caring person. He cared about people a lot. He was a happy kid. He had a great family. Everyone loved him in his family.”