Officials struggling to identify victim of Valentine’s Day shooting

Establishing the identity of the man killed in a Lexington commuter parking lot on Sunday night has proven difficult because he was an undocumented immigrant and had two sets of identification, Lexington County coroner Margaret Fisher said.

“Up to now, we have not been able to get a positive I.D.,” Fisher said.

A likely relative of the dead man is meeting with officials Thursday, and that may help in positively establishing the man’s identity, Fisher said.

“SLED is in our offices and is working with us to pinpoint who this is, and as soon as we know, we will release the name,” Fisher said.

The duty of the coroner’s office is to establish a person’s identity to a certainty before making a name public, Fisher said.

Cases such as this are a growing issue for the coroner’s office, she added.

“We now have a deputy coroner on staff that reads, writes, and speaks fluent Spanish and this is a great help in communicating with families and the Mexican Consulate, but it is still not enough,” Fisher said in a news release. “Identifying undocumented immigrants is a very difficult task and takes an enormous amount of time and manpower.”

The shooting has attracted widespread publicity.

A prominent Midlands restaurateur, Greg Leon, 49, has been charged with murder in the shooting death of the victim, discharging a firearm into an occupied vehicle, possession of a weapon during a violent crime and attempted murder of his longtime wife, Maria, according to warrants in the case.

“I shot my wife’s lover,” a warrant in the case quoted Leon as telling police in a recorded 911 call immediately after the shooting.

Maria Leon was in the back seat of a Toyota Tundra pickup truck with the man when the shooting happened, according to a warrant in the case.

The police warrant also identified the dead man as Arturo Pereyra Bravo, but an identification in a warrant is not as official as a coroner’s announcement. The warrant did not disclose Bravo’s age or home address.

At the time of the shooting, Leon was on federal probation after pleading guilty to hiring 60 immigrants who were in the country illegally.

Leon played a major role in providing evidence that led to the guilty plea last year of former Lexington County Sheriff James Metts, who is now serving a yearlong federal prison sentence. Leon paid Metts bribes to get illegal Mexican immigrants out of the Lexington County jail. Leon recently fulfilled his probation obligations for his role in that scheme.

This story was originally published February 16, 2016 at 5:26 PM with the headline "Officials struggling to identify victim of Valentine’s Day shooting."