His North Carolina family demand answers after learning his body laid in the street for 12 hours.
- Matthew Stapula, 48, died after being caught in the crossfire between a ‘drug trafficker’ and security guards outside a strip club in San Juan, PR.
- It was only when Stapula failed to show up for his flight on the Monday morning that the crew learned he was dead and AA chiefs broke the news to family
- With virtually no word from Puerto Rican authorities, his family pieced together his death from grizzly crime scene photos circulating on social media
- Police have made no arrests and are treating it as a ‘justified homicide’ but have not provided any evidence, video or ballistics analysis to back their theory
- Matthew’s widow Michelle, 43, told the press in an interview at their home in Concord, North Carolina: ‘Now I just want the truth – the whole truth’
- She added: ‘I want to know if he suffered. Without that I don’t think I’m ever going to have closure’
The two men took their dying breaths on a garbage-strewn sidewalk, surrounded by shell casings, blood and chaos.
In the roiling, violence-plagued streets of San Juan where arguments are often settled by a hail of bullets, such scenes are not unusual.
But while one victim was a suspected drug trafficker who drew a pistol on security guards and paid with his life, the other was anything but typical.
Matthew Stapula, an American Airlines pilot on a layover in Puerto Rico, was innocently caught in the crossfire as the two sides traded gunfire outside a strip club.
The 48-year-old first officer had left the adult venue for a cigarette at around 4am, only to be blasted in the arm, leg and chest.
Despite interviewing a trio of bouncers and seizing their weapons after the Wild West-style shootout, detectives with the Policia de Puerto Rico have to date made no arrests.
They are instead treating the bloodbath as a ‘justified homicide’ but have not provided Matthew’s family with any evidence, video or ballistics analysis to back up their theory.
‘I can never put our love story into words,’ Matthew’s widow Michelle, 43, told the press this week in an exclusive interview at their home in Concord, North Carolina.
‘My husband was amazing and we still had so many things we wanted to do, so many memories we wanted to make.
‘Now I just want the truth – the whole truth. I want to know if he suffered. Without that I don’t think I’m ever going to have closure.’
A devoted dad of three and grandfather, Matthew flew into San Juan late on Saturday, February 1 and likely wanted to explore the city and unwind with a few drinks, according to his loved ones.
He ended up at District, a well-known strip club, restaurant and hookah bar that stays open until 5am in the city’s hip Santurce district.
‘I’ve never had a problem with him going to these sorts of places. In fact we had a rule, for every $100 he spent in a strip bar he had to spend the same on me,’ Michelle explained.
It was only when Matthew failed to show up for his return flight on the Monday morning that the crew learned he was dead and AA chiefs broke the news to his stunned family members.
Michelle added: ‘I’m sure he just wanted to have another beer or two before he was done. It’s just surreal that something like this happened and my husband won’t be walking through the door again.’
With virtually no word from Puerto Rican authorities, his loved ones were left to piece his death together from grizzly crime scene photos circulating on social media and Spanish language news reports.
Locals took the ghoulish videos and photos to post on social media, however the press has decided not to publish the graphic images because the pilot’s family have chosen not to look at them.
And as the Stapula family begged for information, they were stunned to learn from a police report that the double slaying was being considered ‘alleged legitimate defense.’
The three doormen told detectives they thought their lives were in imminent danger when they fired off upwards of a dozen rounds.
‘I think Matthew was indiscriminately shot. It was not intentional but I think it was careless,’ his father Eric, 69, told the press.
‘I’m not sure it matters whose gun the bullet came from but what matters most is the way the situation escalated into a shooting match.
‘It seems like bullets were flying from more than one direction. I feel that there was a lot of careless shooting going on.’
In search of fresh clues, the press visited the scene of Matthew’s slaying this week and located 18 different surveillance cameras, 16 of which belonged to District.
Owner David Alexander told us, however, that not a single second of the incident was recorded because his cameras are only rigged up to stream in real-time.
The policy was put in place to protect the privacy of customers despite a previous gangland shooting that took place near the club last September, killing two men.
Alexander’s attorney Peter Diaz predicted that the ballistics analysis would clear the guards and point the finger at Aleman Hernandez Ruben, a 36-year-old suspected drug dealer.
Diaz said Ruben flew into a rage when an off-duty bouncer began talking to his girlfriend inside the raunchy venue, which promises the ‘hottest entertainment in San Juan’.
He told staff he was fetching a credit card from his car to settle his $800 check but returned with a 40 caliber pistol and started shooting towards the entrance.
Security pumped as many as 13 bullets into Ruben, who returned fire even as he lay dying, hitting a bouncer in the leg, injuring a stripper with a ricochet – and possibly shooting Matthew, standing around 10ft away.
‘There is also the possibility that when one of our security guards shot [Ruben] it went through [Ruben] and hit the pilot,’ Diaz conceded.
‘We have to wait for the forensics report to see. We feel very sad about the incident. The security guards stopped the guy. We never expected him to come and try to kill people.’
If the report confirms Matthew was killed by a 40 caliber round rather than the 9mm weapons carried by the club’s bouncers, it would appear to put them in the clear.
But police have warned it could take as long as 90 days for the analysis to be completed.
From paperwork that arrived with his son’s body when it was repatriated, Eric was able to establish that Matthew was shot three times, with bullets hitting his left arm, lower chest and right leg, close to the buttock.
The cause of death, according to notes scribbled by an undertaker, was a severed aorta, the main artery that carries oxygenated blood to the circulatory system.
Eric also learned from local media reports that his son’s body had lain in the street for more than 12 hours because of a shortage of available forensics officers.
It’s an all too familiar story for those living in Puerto Rico, where seven out of every ten crimes go unsolved as the troubled US territory reels from bankruptcy, Hurricane Maria and successive earthquakes.
‘It tells me that they’re woefully understaffed and behind in their duties,’ said Eric, a former pilot and retired technician for Cadillac.
Matthew was just three years old when Eric first sat him on his lap and encouraged him to take the controls of their Piper Cherokee.
The little boy roared with delight as his father let him believe he was making the plane bank and soar across the sky.
‘Of course I would help him a little bit, but you know, in his mind he was flying that airplane,’ Eric chuckled.
‘By the time he was four, he could name every airplane that flew over that house.’
The shabby San Juan side-street were Matthew Stapula was gunned down was lined with 18 different security cameras but not a single one recorded the fatal gunfight, it’s alleged.
CAMERAS WITHOUT RECORDINGS
Reporters counted 16 camera devices belonging to District club but owner David Alexander said they were only rigged up to stream in real time.
He referred us to the club’s attorney, Peter Diaz, who told us that only four of the cameras actually worked.
Security guards were able to watch live feeds on an internal monitor but a ‘policy was put in place some time ago’ to switch off the recording function to protect the privacy of patrons.
Diaz said police had previously asked the club to provide footage for various nearby crimes or incidents they had nothing to do with.
‘The business owners were concerned about individuals coming in and trying to retaliate against us,’ he explained.
‘The police were abusing these videos and some clients were complaining that the recording inside and outside of the club was violating their intimacy, basically.’
The operator of a food truck parked opposite the club’s entrance said his camera was temporarily out of action because he was waiting for a new memory card.
Likewise, the manager of a Chinese restaurant further along the street said her camera was broken and a replacement ordered off Amazon was yet to arrive.
‘I don’t believe in coincidences,’ Matthew’s father Eric told reporters.
‘I would be very surprised if there was not some sort of recording that showed what happened with that many cameras.
‘Without video their story can be anything they want it to be.’
