An innocent bystander killed
Fight across parking lot ended in fatal shots, deputies say
in a gunfight outside a shopping center is remembered as an inspirational fitness buff.
Daniel Strada was an inspirational fitness buff who made goofy YouTube videos and wrapped his mother in giant bear hugs.
Early Sunday morning, the Lake Mary man was hit in the eye and killed by a stray bullet — the victim of a fight that never involved him.
Strada was standing outside Liam Fitzpatrick’s Irish Restaurant in the Colonial Town Park shopping center when Victor Emanuel Brown and Jorge Vega-Rosado got into a fight across the parking lot. Deputies say Brown pulled out a gun and fired a shot. The bullet missed its target and hit Strada, who was standing nearly the length of a football field away.
After Strada was shot, Vega-Rosado got his own gun and fired several times, hitting and killing Brown.
Prosecutors opted not to charge Vega-Rosado because he acted in self-defense and had a valid concealed firearm permit, said Todd Brown, a spokesman from the State Attorney’s Office.
“The investigation clearly established the sequence of events and that the shots fired by Vega-Rosado did not go in the direction of Strada, however Brown’s shot did,” he said.
Victor Brown did not have a concealed carry license, prosecutors said. Had he survived, he’d have been charged with Strada’s murder and attempted murder of Vega Rosado, prosecutors said.
Joe Strada, Daniel’s father, said he still expects to see his son’s big smile whenever a door opens.
“He was as innocent as could be,” he said at a news conference Thursday, standing with his wife, Karen, and sons Anthony and Michael. “Everybody loved him.”
Daniel Strada, who took his fitness seriously, posted videos on his YouTube channel documenting his workout regimen.
In several videos, he says he hopes to inspire people to get in shape.
“I hope I that I can help motivate and inspire you to strive for your success,” he says in one video.
Recently, Strada expressed interest in starting a workout program for children. When a relative suggested he could make money off of the venture, Strada scoffed, his father said.
“‘I don’t want to make money,’ ” Joe Strada recalled his son saying. “‘I just want to help them.’ ”