Brooklyn Boxer Killed While Trying to Break Up Bar Fight

Twenty-eight year old Kemal Kolenovic was killed yesterday morning when an angry man drove into him outside a Bronx bar. Kolenovic had tried to calm down a fight between patrons at the Moonlight Restaurant and Bar. The NY Times says the fight was "apparently brought on by arguments over which Albanian clan was superior." When the argument moved to the outside, one of the men fighting got into his SUV, "made a U-turn in his SUV and jumped the curb outside" and hit Kolenovic, whose back was to the car, according to the Post. Kolenovic later died at St. Barnabas Hospital with massive head injuries. He was not the intended target, but the driver fled and the police are still looking for him.

Kolenovic was an up-and-coming boxer who had immigrated from Montenegro. He was looking to fight at the Loews Paradise Theater in the Bronx this month, if he could find an opponent. Don Stewart, a boxing columnist for The Reading Eagle who saw him fight in May told the Times, "He was real charismatic in the ring. He would jump up and down in the corner before the rounds. He was a real tough little guy. It’s a boxing cliché, but he was a hard-luck journeyman who couldn’t get a break. He had fights that could have gone his way but didn’t for whatever reason."