PROVIDENCE — A 38-year-old man was shot and killed as he ate breakfast at a cafe Saturday morning, the city’s 19th homicide of the year and one of six shootings over the weekend.
Jorge Garcia was sitting inside Roque’s Cafe Restaurant when a gunman opened the door and shot him several times. Garcia was taken to Rhode Island Hospital, where he was pronounced dead. Police responded at about 9 a.m.
Providence Police Major David Lapatin said at a Monday news briefing that while police have not yet established if the gunman and the victim knew each other, the gunman appears to have targeted the victim. Lapatin said police are looking into why Garcia would have been targeted. Garcia was with a friend at the time. They were the only two customers there when the gunman entered, Lapatin said.
The 19 homicides this year surpasses the preliminary total reported at the end of last year, when there were 18. That itself was a spike in homicides. According to FBI data, the last time Providence had more homicides was in 2009, when 23 people were killed in the city. As recently as 2016 and 2018, there were 10 homicides in the city, according to FBI data. Many cities around the country have seen increases in murders in the last year and a half.
Lapatin said the wide availability of guns, and the disruptions caused by COVID, were driving the problem. Police so far this year have taken 158 guns off the street, Lapatin said.
From Friday to Sunday, there were six shootings with victims in Providence. In one case, a man was grazed in the head with a bullet in what Lapatin described as a road rage type incident in a parking lot off Atwells Avenue. In another, a man told two people to be quiet while they were outside his West End house; one grabbed a gun from a bag and shot him, Lapatin said.
The other shootings appear to be targeted, Lapatin said, and they’ve gotten little cooperation from victims in other cases. No arrests had been made as of Monday morning, and the other victims are expected to survive.
Lapatin said six shootings with victims over a weekend was unusual. But, he said: “All in all, Providence is a safe city,” Lapatin said. He added: “You have to be aware of your surroundings,” just like you would at the Warwick Mall.
Brian Amaral can be reached at brian.amaral@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @bamaral44.
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September 27, 2021 at 11:15PM
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Man shot and killed while having breakfast at Providence cafe - The Boston Globe
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