The 26-year-old straphanger gunned down on a Midtown subway platform was remembered as a dedicated gym buff who was devoted to his family — including his ailing father that he lived with, The Post has learned.
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.
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.
“He was mainly with his father. He was crazy about his father,” Pichardo told The Post at the father-and-son’s Bronx apartment.
“He even got jealous when his father got a girlfriend. They’re very close,” the grieving aunt said.
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.
“Heavy weights, right?” Tony quipped, noting that his son loved to play rock and roll on his guitar and enjoyed singing.
Rodriguez was gunned down by a masked gunman — wearing a red tracksuit, a black vest and facial covering — who ran off after bullets flew, leaving the Bronx local dying on the northbound E train platform, police said.
Sources said the two men had an argument on the platform before the armed thug opened fire, but it wasn’t immediately clear what sparked the beef.
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.
No arrests have been made as of Tuesday night.
The heartbroken aunt said her family has never seen the suspect before, noting that her nephew didn’t have much time for friends.
“I think he was waiting for somebody. Chasing somebody,” Pichardo speculated of the suspected gunman.
Rodriguez was described as “a quiet, decent young man” that “didn’t look for problems with nobody,” by longtime neighbor Maddy, who has known him since he was a baby.
His killer “had to be a stranger,” the 46-year-old neighbor said, since “everybody on the block loves him.”
Rodriguez wrote his innermost thoughts down on a piece of paper attached to a black clipboard inside his Bronx home which tragically read: “I had a hard path, I had no one.”
“What is stopping you is you,” Rodriguez penned. “Your ineffectiveness to show up for yourself. Always show up for yourself.”
“Also, that’s the last person to show up for. Show up for yourself. The best person to show up for. Always show up for yourself,” he continued.
Sources said Rodriguez manned the front desk at a Manhattan building as a security guard, though the exact location wasn’t immediately clear — but at the bottom of his handwritten note, Rodriguez wrote: “Need to find a new job.”
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