On the night of September 10, 2024, gunfire cracked through East Burnside Avenue near Jerome Avenue in the Bronx, outside a moped and scooter shop called Speed Racer Imports. Juan Lluverez, 35, was a Hispanic man who lived nearby, and when police rushed in after a 911 call just after 11 p.m., they found him in the street bleeding from two gunshot wounds—one to the abdomen and one to the leg. Paramedics raced him to Saint Barnabas Hospital, but he did not survive.
Investigators said the attack happened fast and felt targeted, even if the reason remained a mystery. Early accounts described a masked gunman approaching on a bicycle, pulling a handgun, and firing three times, with one round reportedly going wide before the others struck Lluverez. Officers recovered shell casings at the scene as the neighborhood tried to make sense of yet another sudden loss on a busy commercial strip.
As detectives worked the case, they focused on the shooter’s escape route as much as the shooting itself. Police reports and local coverage described the suspect as wearing a black hooded sweatshirt and a black ski mask, and fleeing on a bike—reported in some coverage as a Citi Bike—eastbound along East Burnside, with another report saying the rider headed toward East 181st Street. Surveillance video was recovered and was being used to track the suspect’s movements, but officials did not publicly name any person of interest.
Behind the tape lines and the search for a masked figure, his family was left with the cruel timing of it all. Relatives told reporters he had been out for something ordinary—a haircut—and was supposed to leave the city for vacation the very next day. His father described him as easygoing and not someone who “had problems with anybody,” and said he worked in two Bronx convenience stores, making the killing feel even more senseless to those who knew his routines and his calm.
A funeral notice identified him as Juan Gabriel Lluverez, born in the Bronx on December 17, 1988, and described him as a lifelong Bronx resident, listing his parents as Gabriel Lluverez and Cemary Betancourt and noting a visitation held in mid-September 2024. While the family prepared to say goodbye, police publicly stated that no arrests had been made and the motive was still unknown, leaving the case defined—at least for now—by a brief, brutal burst of shots and a suspect who vanished into the night on two wheels.
