Fernando Gonzalez Chavez was 39 when he was shot dead outside a Flushing deli on 162nd Street in Bayside, Queens, in the early hours of May 31, 2017. A single gunshot to his chest pierced a lung and killed him at the scene. He was a father who worked in construction and had celebrated his 39th birthday a few months earlier.

Two Hempstead residents, Roberto Abrego, then 23, and Jose Alvarenga, 27, were arrested and charged with murder and criminal possession of a weapon. Surveillance footage reportedly showed the two men together in the moments before the shooting. At trial, testimony described Alvarenga approaching Gonzalez Chavez while he was against a wall and firing the fatal shot; the jury convicted Jose Smoker Alvarenga of second-degree murder and criminal possession of a weapon in November 2019. It was suggested at trial that Gonzalez Chavez had once been associated with MS-13 but was no longer active.

Did anyone who knew Fernando or saw activity outside that deli around May 31, 2017, notice anything that could help clarify what happened?