To all who knew him, brilliant young video game entrepreneur Jose Zambrano appeared an absolute lock for success.
And then, in a violent minute on a Brooklyn street, it was game over.
A reputed member of the Latin Kings was jailed Friday after a Brooklyn court hearing, accused of attacking the 26-year-old up-and-comer from behind near a Brooklyn bar early last Sunday. Zambrano, flanked by dozens of family members and friends, remained unconscious for four days before his Thursday death at Bellevue Hospital left those who knew him reeling.
“To say he was beloved barely scratches the surface,” said his girlfriend Julie Piñero after suspect Joshua Hernandez was held on $20,000 bail.
Hernandez, led from a Brooklyn courtroom in handcuffs as his mother wailed in anguish, could face upgraded charges in the death. He was initially accused only of assault, attempted assault, menacing and harassment in the attack.
Outside court, the suspect’s stepfather shouted at a reporter to back off: “Yo, yo, get the f— away, bro!”
Hernandez — in a grey fleece, black slacks and two-tone dress shoes — exited in silence as friends of Zambrano struggled to deal with the bright shining star’s shocking demise.
“I will never forget your courage,” tweeted Zambrano’s business partner Rob Canciello. “I love you so much. I’m breaking. You made each and every day brighter, and inspired me to go further than I ever could have imagined.”
Zambrano, with his shoulder-length brown hair and familiar laugh, enjoyed the Midas touch throughout his brief life. After abandoning a job in finance, he launched the successful gaming business Stuido Studios with his pal Canciello.
He became a devotee of playing the drums, and attracted a legion of loyal friends. His interest in architecture led to a recent residency at Frank Lloyd Wright’s famed Fallingwater house in rural Pennsylvania.
So there was no harbinger of impending doom as Zambrano headed home at about 4:30 a.m. Sunday from Mezcaleria La Milagrosa, a small bar tucked behind a freezer door in a Williamsburg laundromat-turned-deli on Havemeyer St. near Grand St.
Zambrano brushed aside a request for a smoke from one man in a group of approaching strangers on the street.
“But they weren’t weren’t looking for a cigarette,” said the speakeasy manager, an eyewitness who refused to give his name. “They were looking for a fight.”
Hernandez, 25, and his friends began taunting Zambrano, who responded in kind, according to the manager. The gangbangers went around the block, circled back and ambushed Zambrano, said the victim’s pals.
Hernandez “did strike Jose Zambrano about the back of the head multiple times and push (him) to the ground,” read a criminal complaint. The beating caused Zambrano to lose consciousness, with the victim’s head slamming into a metal gate as he collapsed, eyewitnesses told the Daily News.
The bartender, who left the watering hole along with Zambrano, went to assist the mortally-injured man as the assailants fled the scene.
Police arrested Hernandez at a nearby Checkers restaurant just hours after the deadly attack. He was arraigned Sunday on the misdemeanor assault charge, and released Wednesday on $10,000 bond.
Family and friends of Zambrano kept a four-day vigil in the Bellevue intensive care unit as he slowly lost the struggle for survival. The dying man’s relatives rushed to the city from Venezuela, Houston and Miami, and a group of his loved ones gathered at his Williamsburg apartment Thursday to mourn his demise.
Hernandez, identified by law enforcement sources as a possible Latin Kings member, has a rap sheet with a pair of felony convictions — the most recent a 2015 attack where he deliberately rammed a bicycle into a cop, hitting the officer hard enough to require stitches.
But his mother denied allegations of any gang affiliation for her son.
“He’s not no gang member,” she told The News at their Bushwick home on Thursday. “He’s a regular kid who goes to work. No one really knows what happened.”
Zambrano, a native of Venezuela, graduated from Suffolk University in Boston. He landed a job at a boutique brokerage firm before deciding to pivot away from finance and into game design, said his roommate Cameron Davis Colan.
“He realized (finance) wasn’t what he wanted to become, or what he loved,” Colan said.
So Zambrano switched careers, becoming an artist and game designer. In 2015, he took an eight-week game-coding class, where he met his game development partner Caniello.
The pair founded a virtual reality video game operation dubbed Stuido Studios, which released several well-received games. They included a horror game called “Don’t Look Away” and another called “The Take” — a party game where players compete as spies searching for items in a series of comic-book themed rooms.
“Rob and Jose just didn’t have the portfolio to make it into the ‘big’ studios. Instead of giving up, they decided to rebel against their frustration and make their own studio, carve their own path, and get better along the way,” the studio’s web site reads.
The city medical examiner’s office will determine the official cause of Zambrano’s death, police said.
With Trevor Boyer and Ellen Moynihan
