NYPD arrests shooting suspects

Dispute led to gunfire at Raleigh restaurant

RALEIGH -- Edwin Humberto Paz was about to order breakfast early Sunday at Restaurant Monte Bar after a night out with a friend when, police said, a man entered and released a hail of bullets, wounding Paz and three others.

Danauri Taveras-Perez, 21, Ramon Rolando Salce, 23, and Pedro Emelio Sosa, 22, were arrested by New York Police on Monday. All three have been charged with four counts of attempted murder. Witnesses identified Taveras-Perez as the man who fired into the restaurant.

The shootings were the result of some sort of dispute all four victims were associated with in some way, Raleigh police spokesman Jim Sughrue said.

Paz, 23, who got the worst of it, was shot in the head. His friend Angel Luis Miranda Valentin, 25, who spent Sunday and most of Monday at WakeMed nursing a wounded hand, said Paz hadn't invited any trouble.

"He's not a problem person," said Valentin. "He's a good person. He's not with no gangs or nothing like that."

Sughrue confirmed there is no indication the incident was gang-related.

Only Valentin had been released from the hospital as of Monday night.

Paz; Fritz Ochoa, 21, who shot in the abdomen; and Christian Mitchell Najera Ramos, 24, who was shot in the buttocks, remained hospitalized at WakeMed Raleigh Campus. Their conditions were not available Monday evening.

Eneyda Cespedes, who opened Monte Bar in a brick strip mall in the 2600 block of East Millbrook Road three weeks ago, said the shooter had scuffled with some men in a restroom and had become disruptive. The shooter was then run out of the Dominican restaurant by a group of Puerto Rican men about 5:30 a.m., Cespedes said, but neither Paz nor Valentin was one of them.

The restaurant was packed with nearly 40 people, Cespedes said.

When the shooter couldn't find the man who been at the center of the earlier conflict, she said, he started shooting at others, firing six shots before retreating from the restaurant.

Cespedes was standing in the door to the kitchen, taking orders for food, when the intruder shot four men nearby, including Ochoa, who is her boyfriend and employee.

"I was lucky," she said. "I was beside the guy that got shot in the head.

"Everybody that got shot wasn't having nothing to do with the guy who had the problem," Cespedes said.

Valentin said he didn't know Ramos or Ochoa. He had no idea why the shooter chose the four victims he did.

"He didn't rob, and he didn't steal," Valentin said. "He just went inside and started shooting people."