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Denise Batista is comforted by her friend, Claribel Cruz, surrounded by family members and friends who gathered at her home in the Heights section of Jersey City, NJ, on October 19, 2005, a day after her son, Juan Batista, 26, was shot to death in what authorities believe was a retaliatory killing in response to the shooting of a Latin Kings member earlier in the year. Denise Batista called her son "a happy person" who was trying to put his life back together after spending time in jail. -- Reena Rose Sibayan / The Jersey Journal