Hector "Macho" Camacho

[66 mustang]

bad news. use to be a GREAT boxer

 

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) -- The family of Hector ''Macho'' Camacho tried to decide Wednesday whether he should be removed from life support after a shooting in his Puerto Rican hometown left the former boxing champion clinging to life and his fans mourning the loss of a dynamic and often troubled athlete.

Doctors at the Centro Medico trauma center in San Juan found that Camacho had irregular and intermittent brain activity late Wednesday, said Dr. Ernesto Torres, the center's director.

''We can't declare him brain dead,'' he said. ''We're going to ask the people of Puerto Rico to keep praying.''

Torres said doctors will conduct additional tests early Thursday but warned the prognosis remains dire.

''The changes have been more negative than positive,'' he said, adding that Camacho does not have enough blood coursing through his brain.

Doctors initially had said Camacho was in critical, but stable condition and expected to survive after he was shot Tuesday night in the city of Bayamon. But his condition worsened overnight and his heart stopped at one point, Torres said.

[66 mustang]

Famed Puerto Rican boxer Hector ''Macho'' Camacho is clinically brain dead, doctors said Thursday, though they said family members were disagreeing on whether to take him off life support.

Dr. Ernesto Torres said doctors have finished performing all medical tests on Camacho, who was shot in the face Tuesday night.

''We have done everything we could,'' said Torres, who is the director of the Centro Medico trauma center in San Juan. ''We have to tell the people of Puerto Rico and the entire world that Macho Camacho has died, he is brain dead.''

 

 

DRUGS FOUND

Police in Puerto Rico say they discovered cocaine inside the car in which Hector ''Macho'' Camacho was shot and critically wounded.

 

He said at a news conference that the family expects to say by Friday if Camacho should remain on life support.

Torres said Camacho's father has already indicated that he wants the boxer taken off life support and his organs donated, but one of his sisters opposes the idea.

[66 mustang]

RIP