A Brooklyn father of 10 shot to death just steps from his home had an ongoing spat with a group of neighbors that sparked a stand-off three weeks before his slaying, the victim’s grief-stricken wife told the Daily News.
Edwin Guevarez, a 40-year-old construction worker with an extensive criminal history including more than 60 arrests, was arriving home after picking up a coffee for his wife when he was slain in East New York about 9:10 a.m. Monday.
“I can’t face it. I’m still waiting for him to come home,” Guevarez’s wife Simone Richards said as she sat in a car near a makeshift memorial of votive candles and red balloons outside the couple’s home. “I’m a strong believer in God — but I have to ask him why he let this happen.”
Guevarez was shot in the upper body and right leg on Ashford St. near Wortman Ave. and died at Brookdale University Hospital.
“They shot him right in front of our home,” Richards said. “I was waiting for him to come home with my coffee. You can see, the coffee’s spilt right here.”
The gunman ran off. A shell casing was recovered by cops on the sidewalk in a pool of the victim’s blood, suggesting the shooter fired at close range.
After being shot, Guevarez ran off down the block away from his home.
“The door was open,” she said. “He could have run into the house but he ran away from us to save us. He’s a hero.”
Guevarez and Richards have been together for 17 years and have 10 children together, seven girls and three boys, she said.
Cops have not disclosed a motive for the slaying but Richards suspects it was connected to an ongoing argument with “neighborhood bullies.”
“These guys in the neighborhood had a problem with him for the longest time,” she said. “He always protected everyone in the neighborhood. They wanted him to move out of the neighborhood. He said, ‘This is my neighborhood. I was born here. You’re not going to bully anyone anymore.’”
Things got so heated that the group confronted Guevarez outside his home on March 7, said Richards, who says that 911 was called.
An NYPD official on Tuesday found no record of a 911 call being made from the victim’s home on that date.
“He worked day and night to feed his kids. We wanted for nothing,” Richards said. “He was a kind-hearted man who put himself last. He gave food and clothes to everyone around him.”
Police sources said Guevarez had been arrested more than 60 times stretching back to 2004. Most of his crimes involved drug dealing but he had also been arrested for gun possession in 2018 as well as car theft and robbery on other dates, sources said.
Cops had also been called to his home dozens of times to quash fights between Guevarez and other family members.
His last arrest was in September for drug possession with intent to sell. He was due back in Brooklyn Criminal Court in May in that case.
At the time of his death, he was also being sought for questioning as a witness in a homicide, sources said.
“For a man to have 10 kids by 40 years old takes a hero,” Richards said. “I never had to work. He cooked, he cleaned. He took care of everybody.”
“He didn’t deserve to die,” she added. “He loved life.”