A Floral Park man is seeking more information about his brother’s death at the hands of a robber in Colombia.
John Mariani, 66, was shot to death Friday night during a botched robbery in Medellin, the South American country’s second-largest city, the Associated Press reported.
Mariani, a lifelong Floral Park resident, was riding in a taxi with a friend, also from Long Island, that was intercepted by armed robbers in another car and on a motorcycle, Colombian authorities told the AP.
The men were traveling through El Poblano, one of Medellin’s wealthiest and safest neighborhoods, the AP reported.
Police said the robbers shot Mariani when he resisted their demands for his wallet and other personal items.
But his younger brother Warren Mariani doubted that account, telling reporters he did not think John would have resisted.
“He’s a decent man,” Warren told New York City’s NBC4. “He had a heart. He’d do anything for anybody, and this should’ve never happened.”
The U.S. Embassy did not have any immediate comment, the AP reported.
The Mariani family is in the process of getting John’s body back to the United States, which could take up to a week, Warren Mariani told the New York Daily News on Monday.
John Mariani and his friend had come to Colombia from Costa Rica, police said.
John Mariani’s older brother Joe Mariani, a Mineola resident, told Newsday the man was John’s “best friend” whom he had known since childhood.
The other man was not injured in the robbery. He and the taxi driver tried to take John Mariani to a hospital, but he died on the way there, according to the AP.
