It’s been said that many people had good reason to want to see convicted murderer Alberto “Alpo” Martinez dead.
Alpo Martinez sent this photograph of himself in a Rolls Royce in Atlanta to a friend in Maine earlier 2021. Martinez was killed on Oct. 31, 2021. Submitted photo
But the man accused of shooting him on Halloween 2021 did it because he was angry Martinez drove too aggressively, according to police.
Martinez, 55, who spent more than five years living in the federal witness protection program in Lewiston, apparently hit Shakeem Parker in a minor crash while the younger man was on foot.
The Daily News, a New York tabloid, reported late Monday that according to police, Parker, 27, gunned down the drug dealer kingpin after a road rage incident.
Police told the Daily News that Parker “nursed a monthslong grudge against the well-known kingpin following a road rage confrontation” last summer when Martinez struck him with his motorcycle.
The tabloid said Parker, “still seething about the incident,” spotted Martinez driving his 2017 maroon Ram pickup truck in Harlem at 3:20 a.m. Oct. 31.
The Daily News said prosecutor Jung Park said during Parker’s arraignment that Parker “fired three shots into the driver’s side window of the truck, turned away, and then turned back and fired twice more.”
Four years ago, Alberto “Alpo” Martinez bought this 2017 Ram from the lot at Lee Auto Malls in Auburn. He was driving it on Halloween 2021 when somebody gunned him down in the Harlem section of New York City. Submitted photo
The mortally wounded Martinez, who called himself Abraham Rodriguez when he lived in Lewiston, drove another block or so before hitting another vehicle and coming to a stop. He threw bags of heroin out the window in his final moments, police told the Daily News.
Parker, who’s been in custody since Nov. 6, pleaded not guilty last week to charges of murder and criminal possession of a weapon.
Martinez was a legendary figure in the world of hip hop, a crack dealer whose network extended from New York to Washington in the 1980s, when he was often seen roaring along the streets of Harlem on fancy motorcycles and in hot cars.
The law caught up with him in 1991, when he confessed to participating in 14 murders, including his best friend, and escaped a possible death sentence by providing state’s evidence that put away a drug kingpin in the nation’s capital.
The story provided the backbone for the 2002 motion picture “Paid in Full,” in which the rapper Cam’ron played the role of Martinez.
When Martinez got out of federal prison in 2015, he was released in Maine and given the chance to lie low. Sometimes, he did. His College Street neighbors in Lewiston never knew his past.
But in the last few years, he was often visiting family and friends in New York, Boston, Atlanta and beyond, clearly flouting the notion of hiding in Lewiston despite threats from old rivals.
Many had suspected that Martinez had been shot by somebody he’d wronged in the past or perhaps by somebody unhappy with his busy love life.
It turned out, though, if police are right, that it was hardly the Hollywood ending many had guessed.
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