Aug 25, 2009 7:07 pm US/Eastern
Mother Of Murdered NYC Bouncer Speaks Out To CBS 2
Eric Pagan Was Gunned Down Sunday Outside A Lower East Side Nightclub
NEW YORK (AP) ―
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Elena Lopez, Eric Pagan's mother, cries as she recalls when she learned of her son's tragic murder on August 23, 2009.
CBS
A bouncer who tried to break up a fight instead wound up dead in a vicious murder that has destroyed his family. In an exclusive interview with CBS 2, the man's mother spoke out about the arrest of his alleged killer.
Elena Lopez learned of her son's murder after she had gotten back from church. To her surprise, family was waiting in her small apartment, and her daughter, there from upstate, delivered the news.
"She took me into the room and she said to me, 'Mami! It's about Eric!" Lopez recalled. "She pulled me next to her on the bed and she said, 'Mami, somebody killed Eric,' and from there, my heart, my heart, I don't know what happened. From there, I got a pain here, and I – am beat."
Eric Pagan, 42, his friends called him "Taz," had gone on his off night to the club on Avenue A where he worked to pick up a few tools. Some customers had dropped their car keys, and as they looked in the street, police say a car came close to them. Words were exchanged, people got out of the car, and someone from the car started shooting. Two people were injured, and when Pagan came over to break it up, police say Louis Rodriguez shot him in the head and killed him.
"This man don't know who he took away," said Lopez. "This man took a life that is so precious for two children! They love him so much. Now they not gonna see him no more!"
Pagan was shot and killed outside the Lower East Side club Forbidden City, the club where he worked as a bouncer. It was one of two jobs that he had there. At night he was the bouncer, and during the day, he served as an electrician. He worked the two jobs to support his family, especially his two children, including a boy whom he adopted when his wife died of cancer.
"He surrounded every corner of his apartment with his two children," Lopez said.
When Teresa, their mother, died of leukemia nine years ago, the little girl was 5, and the boy, Andrew, whom Pagan adopted as his own, was 8. Pagan took care of them ever since, that is, until he was shot and killed late Sunday. When the children's mother died at the age of 25, Pagan and the kids moved in with Lopez. She says he worked two jobs because he was saving for a house.
(© 2010 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)
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