{"id":378680,"date":"2026-10-21T06:18:09","date_gmt":"2026-10-21T06:18:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/378680\/"},"modified":"2026-10-21T06:18:09","modified_gmt":"2026-10-21T06:18:09","slug":"nyc-subway-shooting-victim-remembered-as-a-gym-buff-and-a-family-man-he-was-crazy-about-his-father","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/378680\/","title":{"rendered":"NYC subway shooting victim remembered as a gym buff and a family man: \u2018He was crazy about his father\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

The 26-year-old straphanger gunned down on a Midtown subway platform<\/a> was remembered as a dedicated gym buff who was devoted to his family \u2014 including his ailing father that he lived with, The Post has learned.<\/p>\n

Darrel Rodriguez, who was fatally shot in the chest at the 53rd Street\/7th Avenue station around 12:20 p.m. Saturday, was committed to two things in his life: the gym and work, according to his aunt Ana Pichardo.<\/p>\n

Darrel Rodriguez, 26, was shot and killed on the platform at 7th Avenue and 53rd Street in Midtown Saturday. Sofia Poznansky for NY Post<\/p>\n

Pichardo, 61, said her nephew would pick up shifts as a security guard whenever he could and lived with his father, Tony, who suffered a stroke and struggles to speak.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was mainly with his father. He was crazy about his father,\u201d Pichardo told The Post at the father-and-son\u2019s Bronx apartment.<\/p>\n

Darrel Rodriguez (left) had two brothers, including a twin.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe even got jealous when his father got a girlfriend. They\u2019re very close,\u201d the grieving aunt said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Rodriguez had only recently set up a home gym inside of his bedroom a few months ago with a weight bar, his father said in Spanish, translated by Pichardo.<\/p>\n

\u201cHeavy weights, right?\u201d Tony quipped, noting that his son loved to play rock and roll on his guitar and enjoyed singing.<\/p>\n

Rodriguez had only recently set up a home gym in his bedroom a few months ago, his father Tony told The Post on Tuesday. Sofia Poznansky \/ NY Post<\/p>\n

Rodriguez was gunned down by a masked gunman<\/a> \u2014 wearing a red tracksuit, a black vest and facial covering \u2014 who ran off after bullets flew, leaving the Bronx local dying on the northbound E train platform, police said.<\/p>\n

Sources said the two men had an argument on the platform before the armed thug opened fire, but it wasn\u2019t immediately clear what sparked the beef.<\/p>\n

Cops are working to ID the shooter, but are handcuffed by lack of video from the platform and the fact that his face was covered, the sources added.<\/p>\n

Police are on the hunt for Rodriguez\u2019s suspected killer pictured above. DCPI<\/p>\n

No arrests have been made as of Tuesday night.<\/p>\n

The heartbroken aunt said her family has never seen the suspect before, noting that her nephew didn\u2019t have much time for friends.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think he was waiting for somebody. Chasing somebody,\u201d Pichardo speculated of the suspected gunman.<\/p>\n

Rodriguez was described as \u201ca quiet, decent young man\u201d that \u201cdidn\u2019t look for problems with nobody,\u201d by longtime neighbor Maddy, who has known him since he was a baby.<\/p>\n

Police gather at a Midtown subway station where Darrel Rodriguez was shot and killed by an unknown gunman on the 7th Avenue platform at 53rd Street, Saturday, Oct. 17, 2026. Michael McWeeney for NY Post<\/p>\n

His killer \u201chad to be a stranger,\u201d the 46-year-old neighbor said, since \u201ceverybody on the block loves him.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rodriguez wrote his innermost thoughts down on a piece of paper attached to a black clipboard inside his Bronx home which tragically read: \u201cI had a hard path, I had no one.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat is stopping you is you,\u201d Rodriguez penned. \u201cYour ineffectiveness to show up for yourself. Always show up for yourself.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ana Pichardo looks over at her nephew Darrel\u2019s handwritten note as a relative translates the thoughts from English to Spanish. Sofia Poznansky \/ NY Post<\/p>\n

\u201cAlso, that\u2019s the last person to show up for. Show up for yourself. The best person to show up for. Always show up for yourself,\u201d he continued. <\/p>\n

Sources said Rodriguez manned the front desk at a Manhattan building as a security guard, though the exact location wasn\u2019t immediately clear \u2014\u00a0 but at the bottom of his handwritten note, Rodriguez wrote: \u201cNeed to find a new job.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The 26-year-old straphanger gunned down on a Midtown subway platform was remembered as a dedicated gym buff who…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":378681,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[1015,57,360,141,9,24,56,63,65,64,3980,1687,129,58],"class_list":["post-378680","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-deaths","tag-metro","tag-midtown","tag-mta","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-nyc-headlines","tag-nyc-news","tag-shootings","tag-subways","tag-the-bronx","tag-us-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378680","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=378680"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378680\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/378681"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=378680"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=378680"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=378680"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}