Hector “Macho” Camacho, a former world champion boxer, died on Saturday at the hospital in Puerto Rico where he has been unconscious since he was shot in the face in an attack in his hometown.

Camacho, 50, went into cardiac arrest in the pre-dawn hours and he was then taken off life support and died shortly thereafter, said Dr Ernesto Torres, the director of the Centro Medico trauma center in San Juan.

The boxer was known for his skill and flamboyance in the ring as well as for a messy personal life and run-ins with the police out of it.

The police said that Camacho was shot in the left side of the face on Tuesday night as he sat in a black Ford Mustang with a friend, The Associated Press reported. The bullet fractured his vertebrae and was lodged in his shoulder when he was taken to the Puerto Rico Medical Center. The friend, Adrian Mojica Moreno, was also killed.

The police said that two men fled the scene in a sport utility vehicle, but that no arrests had been made. They said nine bags of cocaine were found in Moreno’s pockets and a 10th was found open in the car.

Former world boxing champion Hector “Macho” Camacho was shot in the face as he sat in a car outside the Puerto Rican capital Tuesday, and doctors said he was in serious condition but expected to survive.

Another man in the car, whose relationship to the 50-year-old Camacho wasn’t immediately known, died in the attack in which at least one gunman opened fire on their vehicle in the city of Bayamon, according to a statement from police.

Camacho was rushed to Centro Medico, the trauma center in San Juan, where he was in critical but stable condition, Dr. Ernesto Torres, the hospital director, told reporters.

The bullet apparently struck him in the jaw but exited his head and lodged in his right shoulder and fractured two vertebrae, Torres said. The doctor said the boxer, who was trailed by drug and alcohol problems during a career that included some high-profile bouts, could be paralyzed from the shooting.

Three-time world boxing champion Hector “Macho” Camacho is brain dead following a drive-by shooting in Puerto Rico, a doctor said on Thursday.   Camacho, 50, whose speed and flamboyance made him a top attraction in the 1980s and 1990s, is in a coma and unresponsive, said Dr. Ernesto Torres, director of the Rio Piedras Medical Center.   Camacho “is clinically brain dead,” Torres told reporters. “The tests showed a flat line, without any type of activity.”