Philly woman speaks out after fiancé shot, killed while driving in Puerto Rico
A woman from Philadelphia is mourning the loss of her fiancé after he was killed in a shooting while they were on vacation in Puerto Rico earlier this month.
The shooting happened around 2:12 a.m. on Jan. 3, 2026, as the couple was driving along Roosevelt Street and approaching Blanca Street in the Figueroa ward of Santurce in San Juan, police said.
When officers got to the scene, they learned multiple shots were fired at the Kia Sportage the couple was in.
The man, identified as 33-year-old Omar Padilla, was shot in the head and the woman with him, Kelly Crispín, was hurt with gunshot wounds to her hand and shoulder, police reported.
Padilla would later die at the hospital on Jan. 22.
There are additional resources for people or communities that have endured gun violence in Philadelphia. Further information can be found here.
Fiancé speaks out after deadly shooting
Omar Padilla and Kelly Crispín were visiting family and friends for the new year when they went out to dinner in a busy area of San Juan, Crispín told NBC10.
It was Friday night so the couple decided to park in an adjacent neighborhood about 10 minutes walk from where the restaurant was located, Crispín recalled.
After they returned to their car at the end of the night, Padilla was driving toward the highway, turned onto a street and that’s when they saw over a dozen men holding AR-15 style weapons, Crispín explained.
Padilla tried to drive away from the area as quickly as possible, but the group of men opened fire at their car so Crispín said she called 911.
All of a sudden, the car came to a stop and the men started pulling them out of the vehicle and searching through their things, Crispín said.
According to Crispín, she started to hear the men realize they had made a mistake.
“They started telling us, ‘You need to get out of here. Police can’t come here. They are not going to be able to help you.’ They even started telling us how to get out of the neighborhood,” Crispín said.
Later, Crispín said that she realized that there is a police station less than one mile from where the shooting happened.
“I felt like we were failed by the police there. That they didn’t protect us. That they didn’t protect Omar,” Crispín explained. “No real progress has been made in the case and I just feel like if I don’t talk about this, if nothing is done, if people don’t care, that this could happen again to anybody else.”
Crispín said they were in a safe area of San Juan when she believes that she and Padilla were in the “wrong place, wrong time” as members of an apparent local gang ambushed the couple.
“It was very obvious that if this was a trap, if it was an ambush or if it was an accident, either way, it wasn’t meant for us. We were the wrong target,” Crispín told NBC10. “If just feels increasingly more like he died for nothing. They didn’t steal anything. They didn’t take the car. They just killed him and nothing happened. Like, nothing will happen to them.”
The San Juan Criminal Investigations Corps is investigating.
