A popular Norwood man was shot and killed during an early Sunday morning dispute on Decatur Avenue, just two blocks from his home.

According to NYPD spokesman James Duffy, the deadly confrontation took place outside of a three-family home at 3089 Decatur Ave., between Mosholu Parkway North and East 204th Street at 2:27 a.m., on Sunday, Dec. 9.

After responding to a report of a male shot, police arrived on the scene to find Gary Rodriguez, 46, of 3285 Decatur Ave., with a gunshot wound to his chest. Rodriguez was transported to Montefiore Medical Center where he was pronounced dead on arrival.

“We have no arrests at this time and the investigation is ongoing,” Duffy said. “We don’t know what this was all about. We don’t have any motive or any suspect information.”

According to a friend of the victim, who asked not to be identified, the perpetrator “tried to rob him of his cash. I know he got into a fight and once he got to the fight, he was getting the better end of it, and the kid pushed him off and just shot him.”

According to the friend, in the moments after he was shot from just several feet away, at least one witness heard Rodriguez ask the killer, “Why did you do this to me?”

A cell phone lying on the sidewalk within the taped-off crime scene, rang several times in the hours after the shooting. Rodriguez’s sister says she has no idea what Rodriguez would have been doing two blocks away from his home at such a late hour and wondered if somebody lured him out. She said Rodriguez didn’t normally keep late hours and that she doesn’t have the first clue who would have wanted to kill her brother.

Rodriguez served a prison term earlier in his life, his sister said, but had not been living a criminal lifestyle for many years.

Rodriguez, who friends say was a hardworking scrap metal worker, has lived in the area with his family for the at least 10 years, his sister said.

During the monthly 52nd Precinct Community Council meeting, held at Fordham Methodist Church on Thursday, Nov. 29, Deputy Inspector Joseph Dowling said that only one of the precinct’s three homicides this year remained unsolved.

Coincidentally, that unsolved murder was a drug-related homicide inside an apartment on Decatur Avenue near East Gun Hill Road, just three blocks from last weekend’s shooting. But Dowling added, “That’s a long term investigation, but we will have that closed, just a matter of letting the investigation develop.”

It may have been before Dowling’s deployment to the 52nd Precinct, but residents of Decatur Avenue recall a third, still-unsolved and now “cold case” murder — the Feb. 14, 2009 homicide of taxi driver and internet deejay Michael Lorge, who was shot dead as he warmed-up his car to go to work.

Ed. Note: Anyone with any information on Rodriguez or Lorge’s death is asked to call CrimeStoppers at (800) 577-TIPS. All calls remain confidential. A version of this story was originally published in the Dec. 13-26 print edition.