A 25-year-old customer was found dying inside legendary Brooklyn social club Toñitas, police said Monday.
Police responding to a 911 call discovered Mario Xo-Pop bruised with cuts on his back and hip inside the lively watering hole also known as Caribbean Social Club in Williamsburg about 9:45 p.m. Sunday.
Medics rushed Xo-Pop to Woodhull Hospital, but he could not be saved.
Local residents and business owners said they were told the victim died of injuries he recently suffered in some sort of car crash for which he did not receive immediate medical attention. Neighbors speculated Xo-Pop was undocumented and worried that might explain why he had been reluctant to seek help.
“He got in a car accident, didn’t go to the hospital. When he went to get up, he passed out,” said one man requesting anonymity who said he spoke with cops canvassing neighbors.
“God bless him,” the neighbor added. “No way to go.”
Police initially suspected Xo-Pop was the victim of a homicide but came to believe otherwise later Monday, sources said. The city Medical Examiner will determine the victim’s cause of death.
Xo-Pop’s roommates in Bushwick said he moved to the city about a year ago from his native Cobán, Guatemala.
While the roommates said Xo-Pop was working at Toñitas when he died, the establishment later paid tribute to Xo-Pop in a social media post, saying he was was a regular patron not a worker.
The iconic no-frills night spot on Grand St. near Roebling St. is Brooklyn’s oldest Latino social club and one of its last remaining. Its octogenarian owner, Maria Antonia Cay, is known to tend bar for dancing patrons old and young until the sun rises and feed them for no charge.
The club’s reputation as one of the last remnants of heavily gentrified Williamsburg’s working class Latino roots was highlighted in an award-winning documentary named after its beloved matriarch, “Toñita,” in 2013. The short produced by Beyza Boyacioglu and Sebastian Diaz premiered at New York’s Museum of Modern Art.
Cay declined to comment on Xo-Pop’s death Monday.
