A suspect has been identified in a shooting at a Queens sports bar that claimed the life of a 34-year-old man, police said Tuesday.
Paublo Torres, 21, is wanted for opening fire inside El Catracho sports bar in Queens on Feb. 21, mortally wounding Denis Nunez with gunshot wounds to the stomach and left shoulder, cops said.
The NYPD also released a mug shot of Torres taken following a Dec. 8 arrest, when he was caught with a firearm, two switchblades and drugs just three blocks away from the 103rd Precinct station house in Queens, according to law enforcement officials.
On the night of the shooting, Nunez was with his brother at the bar on Jamaica Ave. near 184th Place when a fight broke out around 1:45 a.m., cops said.
Denis Nunez was pronounced dead at Jamaica Hospital after he was shot multiple times at the El Catracho Sports Bar on Jamaica Ave. in Queens on Saturday, Feb. 21, 2026. (Theodore Parisienne / New York Daily News)
Nunez had just stepped out of the bar when he was hit by bullets fired from inside the watering hole.
“I don’t really know what happened because I was inside,” Nunez’s brother, who wished not to be named, told the Daily News. “He was outside already and somebody shoot him from inside the bar to outside.”
A law enforcement source said the victim and the suspect had no relationship prior to the shooting.
Medics rushed Nunez to Jamaica Hospital, where he died.
A brother of the victim told the Daily News his brother was outside the sports bar when “somebody shoot him from inside the bar to outside.”
“I tried to carry (him) to the hospital. That’s why a lot of blood on me,” he said. “I stopped because I saw the ambulance come. Then they took him from there and they (didn’t) let me go with him to the hospital.”
Torres has been arrested five times in New York City.