NEW YORK (1010 WINS) — A suspect who was extradited from Serbia was arrested and charged on Friday in the 18-year-old cold case murder of a professional boxer that occurred in the Bronx on New Year’s Eve 2006, the NYPD said.
Ahmet Gashi is charged with second-degree murder in the killing of Kemal Kolenovic, a professional boxer from Brooklyn who was only 28-years-old when he died.
The killing took place on the morning of Dec. 31, 2006 after Kolenovic “had a verbal dispute” with another man, police said. Officers responded to Crescent Avenue and Belmont Avenue at 4:35 a.m., and an investigation found that the suspect, allegedly Gashi, entered his SUV and ran over Kolenovic before fleeing the scene.
EMS took Kolenovic to Saint Barnabas Hospital where he could not be saved.
According to a report from the New York Times published the day after the murder, the killing took place after a barroom argument spilled out from the Moonlight Restaurant and Bar and onto Belmont Avenue. Kolenovic was not originally involved in the dispute, but stepped outside to see what it was about, the report said.
“He was trying to break up the fight,” Kolenovic’s uncle Tony Mujoovic, 35, told the New York Times. “They were drinking. That’s a big part of it, I think.”
Kolenovic, an ethnic Albanian, came to Brooklyn from Montenegro in 1993 and boxed in the professional welterweight division, the report said. He had a record of 10 wins, six losses and two draws, and was slated to begin serious training in preparation for a Jan. 25 fight at the Loews Paradise Theater at the time of his death.
Police said that Gashi, 42, was extradited from his home in Serbia recently to face charges in the murder. An exact date of his extradition could not be provided.