By msnbc.com staff and NBC News
A man who was injured by Manhattan subway gunman Bernhard Goetz has been found dead in what appears to be a drug overdose 27 years to the day after the shooting, NBCNewYork.com reported Friday.
James Ramseur, one of four then-teenagers wounded in the notorious 1984 incident, was discovered dead in a Bronx motel room on Thursday, with two empty prescription pill bottles next to the bed. The labels were scratched off of the bottles,?The New York Daily News?reported.
His death is being investigated as an apparent overdose and as a possible suicide, sources told The Daily News. They said Ramseur, 45, checked into the motel Tuesday and was scheduled to check out Thursday morning.?
His body was found by the motel manager who went into his room after he didn't return the keys?Thursday, The Daily News said. No note was left.
Ramseur was freed from prison last year after serving 25 years for a rape, according to NBCNewYork.com. He was one of four black teens shot by Goetz on a train on Dec. 22, 1984, in a shooting that earned Goetz the nickname of "subway vigilante" by city newspapers.
Goetz claimed he opened fire because the teenagers were trying to rob him; they said they had simply asked him for five dollars. What is indisputable was that?after shooting and wounding all four teens, Goetz ran off of the subway car, fled the city and didn't turn himself in until eight days after the shooting.
Stan Honda / AFP - Getty Images, file
Bernhard Goetz, seen in April 2011
Ramseur suffered a severe wound and was in a coma briefly afterward.
The shooting divided New York, with some hailing Goetz as a hero who had stood up against petty subway crime and others calling him a racist.
At his trial, a mostly white jury?acquitted Goetz of all charges except illegal weapons possession. He served 250 days on Rikers Island.
According to Biography.com, Goetz still lives in New York City and has?opened a store called?Vigilante Electronics.
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