Читать книгу Berserk. The Shocking Life and Death of Edwin Valero онлайн

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Ortega fretted over Valero. The kid was a bit of a loose cannon. Valero would tell his coach, “Don't worry professor. I have my feet on the ground.”

Ortega tried to teach Valero that a boxer's life was difficult. One of the country's best, Vicente Paul Rondon, had recently died in a Caracas slum, destitute and forgotten.

Valero had no use for cautionary tales. In fact, Valero was jailed over a dozen times before he was fifteen. (One police file cited forty arrests throughout his life.) Ortega would always bail him out. Valero bragged that he was given preferential treatment because he was an athlete. Still, he couldn't curb his taste for larceny.

He robbed local university students, stealing small motorbikes and storing them in the gym. He later claimed his bike stealing got him six months in jail, which convinced him to get out of the criminal life. Other sources mention a seven-month stint for assaulting a woman at gunpoint. Valero is also believed to have shot and killed a rival over a stolen motorcycle. He hid out for weeks in Caracas like a fugitive.