A Bronx dad who spent more than two years on Rikers Island for a stabbing he didn’t commit was knifed to death during an argument outside a bar in his neighborhood.
Baraquiel Castelan, 32, was found bleeding from his neck outside the El Chicanito bar and restaurant on E. 153rd St. near Elton Ave. in Melrose at about 3:50 a.m. Saturday, police said.
Paramedics rushed Castelan to Lincoln Hospital, but he could not be saved.
“All we want is the person who did it has to pay,” said his younger sister, Olivia Castelan, 29. “A lot of things happen in that place. Why is it still open? Somebody got murdered there … How do we feel that we have to walk and see that place open, knowing that my brother died there?”
Castelan, who lived a short distance from where he was killed, was arguing with a group of people when the killer him stabbed in the neck, arm and chest, then ran down E. 153rd St., cops said.
Police released photos of a suspect Sunday, and are asking anyone with information to call Crime Stoppers at (800) 577-TIPS.
Castelan had two young daughters, ages 9 and 1, his sister said, and did delivery work for nearby pharmacies until a recent accident. He also worked at a family restaurant in his neighborhood, said his civil lawyer, Christopher Fitzgerald.
“My nephews, they looked at him like a father figure and I just want justice for my brother,” his sister said with a sob Sunday. “He didn’t deserve to die like that.”
Castelan was featured in a 2016 New York Times article, part of a series chronicling every murder from the year before in the NYPD’s 40th Precinct.
At the time, he was locked up on Rikers Island as he awaited trial for attempted murder in the stabbing of a man named Anthony Velazquez, who had a child with another of his siblings.
Police described him at the time as a leader in the Mexican-American Cholos 152 street gang — but he denied being a gang leader, calling the Cholos “more like friends than a gang.”
In the interview, he discussed how another man, Roberto Rodriguez, was killed before he could exonerate him in the stabbing.
Even so, Castelan was able to beat the charges — after a different witness took the stand at his trial, one who gave a statement to police early in the investigation that he didn’t stab Velazquez.
Castelan sued the NYPD in 2018, accusing police of not coming forward with that statement until the trial was already underway. That case is still pending.
“They tried to pin it on him,” Castelan’s sister said about the stabbing, insisting that he wasn’t involved in gang activity.
“But when he got out he was completely clean, upstanding,” she said, “with a solid job.”
Fitzgerald, Castelan’s lawyer, said his 27-month experience on Rikers Island left him traumatized.
During his stay there, he was stabbed in the head by another inmate, and when he got out, he had missed out on raising his oldest daughter — who was 3 and didn’t recognize him after his release.
“Every time I met within or spoke with him I was very impressed how down to earth and mild-mannered and articulate he was, how he cared for his kid and his family,” Fitzgerald said.
“This experience really did truly traumatize him … He was a working guy, and just by this unfortunate set of circumstances he got swept up int the apparatus and went through the nightmare of being locked up on Rikers Island.”
Olivia Castelan said she learned about her brother’s murder when someone knocked on her mom’s door and told the woman. She rushed out to the scene and went to the hospital soon after.
“He’s so cold. The body was so cold,” she recalled. “Everyone in the neighborhood loved him.”
Baraquiel, one of five siblings, stood up for their family and took charge after their father was murdered in Mexico about a year ago.
“That really affected my brother mentally,” she said of their father’s death. “It affected everyone…. “For someone to yank everything out, we felt like we were lost, like we had nobody.”
Their mother Juana Lopez, who was living in the U.S., returned to Mexico for a time, but after her own life was repeatedly threatened, her family convinced her to return to New York in December, Olivia Castelan said.
Baraquiel held on to her apartment and she returned to live with him.
“He was happy. At least his last few days he was able to sit down with my mom and eat and be there with her,” his sister said. “Our life was starting to feel a little bit at peace.”
