By Cambrey Thomas
Aurelio “AJ” Manresa, Jr. liked to play handball. Candice Battice, a family friend who knew Manresa and saw him grow up, remembers him as a 6’3″ athletic 22-year-old who liked hitting the gym and playing sports. But of all the games he played, she said, he liked handball best. “He would walk around with a glove and a ball,” said Battice. “And if you walked by he would ask you to play.”
He would play in the court behind the Farragut Houses, where he lived and where on the night of September 24 he was fatally shot in the chest.
Police reported that a fight broke out that night and shots were fired. Manresa was stuck in the crossfire. An earlier police report says he was after shot after witnessing a wild street fight. And an even earlier report says an angry guest opened fire on a house party he was attending. In each case, police said it is unclear whether he was a witness, involved, or caught by a stray bullet. His family and friends believe he was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Battice lived in the homes too, but moved away seven years ago. She was close to Manresa’s sister, Jabonda Payne and remembers Manresa being a jokester when the two tried to hang out. “He’d just be out there dancing, just busting a move on his sister,” Battice said. “We’d have to sit him in the back.”
Payne says that Manresa was the type to make a joke out of everything to lighten a mood or calm a situation, even when he was upset. She said she’ll miss his smile and laugh. “I’m going to miss being a big sister,” she said, too.
They liked to watch movies together. Payne says that although he loved quoting Scarface, he loved anything with an animated crime-fighter like Batman or Spiderman. Happy Feet, an animated film about a penguin born with the ability to tap dance when all the other penguins could only sing, was another one of his favorites.
His mother, Norma Douglas, said her son would dance anywhere, even in public. “Come on mom, let’s dance,” she recalled him saying when a good song came on. They would dance to anything, but he he especially liked hip-hop and salsa.
Before he was born, Manresa’s parents lived in Manhattan. When his mother went into labor, her family rushed her to Long Island College Hospital in Brooklyn. “He was my birthday present,” Douglas said. “They brought him to me with ribbons on him, balloons, and a little cake.” That was July 1, 1988.
They named the baby after his father, who was named after his father, Aurelio Manresa who was born in Havana, Cuba. “He would wave his Cuban flag,” she said of her son. He wore a Cuban flag belt buckle, too.
The family moved to Brooklyn when Manresa was a toddler. Douglas taught her son to do impersonations and the two would watch the Discovery Channel together. Douglas said he was an especially active child and would talk about how he wanted to grow up to be a wrestler.
Payne says that her brother loved watching wrestling on TV and kept posters of The Rock, his favorite wrestler. He often did impersonations of the wrestler and thought they resembled each other.
However, the dream of being a wrestler faded as Manresa got older. He worked as a security guard in Brooklyn clubs and as a bodyguard for his musician uncle. In fact, he had just finished getting his security guard license. On the side he performed freestyle rap for his friends, but shrugged off his talent when anyone suggested hooking him up with connections or giving him a stage to perform on.
Manresa liked living in Farragut, but he wanted something else. “He said it was hard to leave. He wanted to get out, but he didn’t know how,” said his friend, Curtis Shannon, Jr.
Shannon met Manresa six months ago. They became friends after he began seeing Manresa’s ex-girlfriend, Cynthia Sanchez. Sanchez, who remained close with Manresa, introduced them. He and Manresa would play Rock Band and go to Webster Hall on Thursday nights to hang out.
“We would talk about our problems,” said Shannon. “He would talk about getting his money right so he could do something with his life.” In fact, Manresa had just started modeling and had showed him and Sanchez his new modeling portfolio. “He was really excited.”
Another friend, 19-year-old Joshua Navarro, recalls how Manresa liked to make peoplke laugh. “He was so funny,” Navarro said. “He would make up words to make everyone laugh. Navarro recalled how once when he was having a bad day he went to talk to Manresa.
“Ka-blue-ke!” Manresa shouted and everyone laughed. “Kablueke” became Manresa’s catchphrase, it was even written in thick marker on the memorial outside his building’s front door.
“Once he came to my house with a weave in his head as a joke,” said Navarro. “He took off has hat and started swinging his hair and said ‘This is me.’”
Manresa tried to teach Navarro to play handball, but they had better luck with video games. Navarro said the two would play the game Mind of Warfare: Call of Duty, but he could never beat Manresa.
“You’d catch AJ in the weirdest sandals – like flip-flops or slippers,” said Battice. She said she would ask him why he would wear them outside. She said he was wearing them Friday night, too.
Douglas said that on the night her son died he was standing outside the Farragut Houses at 177 Sands St. talking to his friend Jonathan Rodriguez. Manresa was on his way to check on his grandmother who lived across the street at 191 Sands St.
Douglas said that his grandmother saw him from her window, but because it was late and dark outside, she couldn’t tell if the young man was her grandson.
According to police, just before 11:15 pm, as he and Rodriguez walked towards the other building, a fight broke out across the street – according to residents, an argument between a man and woman over accusations of cheating. The argument became physical.
At the same time, further down the block, Rev. Dr. Mark V.C. Taylor was sitting in his office at The Church of the Open Door where he serves as pastor. Rev. Taylor has worked in the area for 20 years and said that from his church on Gold Street he gets to see the better part of the Farragut community. He was sitting at his desk when he heard gunfire. “There is a lot of peace in this neighborhood,” he said. “But things flare up.”
Manresa’s grandmother heard the shots too from outside her window and ducked for safety.
Manresa, too, heard the shots and started running back towards his building. But, said his mother, a stray bullet ricocheted off either the building or a metal railing and struck him in the chest. The bullet traveled through Manresa’s lungs, past his heart, and stopped at his shoulder. Douglas said that Rodriguez grabbed her son and started feeling for his exit wound but couldn’t find one.
Rev. Taylor stepped outside and saw police cars speeding north on Gold Street towards the Farragut Houses. Manresa’s grandmother returned to her window to see a man lying on the ground with police and crowds around. She would later learn that it was her grandson.
Douglas got the call at 11:25 pm from her brother-in-law who also lived in the building. She was home in the Bronx with her partner.
“They said they were going to take him to Bellevue,” Douglas said. “But then they said he would die in transit if they did.” The police initially reported he was rushed to Bellevue Hospital Center, but Manresa was rushed to Brooklyn Hospital Center. Rodriguez told Douglas later that police tried to wrestle him away from Manresa, but they couldn’t get him to let him go.
In the emergency room Douglas, Shannon and Sanchez, were told that Manresa lost a lot of blood through internal bleeding.
“We waited for hours for him to come out of the OR,” she said. Doctors eventually called the family to see him once he was out of surgery. “He died in my arms at The Brooklyn Hospital Center at 4:26 am.”
Rev. Taylor said he prayed with Douglas. He’s been praying for the shooter, too. “I don’t believe a person can shoot another person and not have a withdrawal,” he said.
Sanchez says that she still expects Manresa to call her, even though she was with him in the hospital. “I’m going to miss him calling me and coming over,” she said. “I’m going to miss a lot.”
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