A Farmington family is coming to grips with the death of their 28-year-old son, who was stabbed to death just days before finishing a bicycle trip down the East Coast, family members said.
Kevin Adorno, 28, of Unionville, had stopped to buy food and charge his phone at a McDonald's restaurant on U.S. Route 1 in Vero Beach, Florida, when he was stabbed around 9:30 p.m. Monday, according to police.

Authorities have identified his attacker as 59-year-old Rene Herrera Cruz, a homeless man who had recently arrived in Vero Beach from Miami, according to the arrest affidavit.

Cruz told police he was in the parking lot when a motorcycle pulled up near him. According to the affidavit, "Cruz had felt as if people kept watching him" so he moved to a different area and took a filet knife from his backpack.

He told police a man sitting in the restaurant near Adorno kept looking at him, making him nervous.

When Adorno went outside to use his cellphone, Cruz thought Adorno was taking pictures of him and "directing people to go after him," according to the affidavit.

Adorno was walking near the drive-thru lanes in Cruz's direction, and Cruz pulled the knife as Adorno approached, the affidavit says.

Police said Adorno spotted the knife and ran, but Cruz attacked.

"He's going in cardiac arrest, please," a witness is heard begging dispatchers in the 911 call. "He got stabbed in the heart. It was an attack, please."

Authorities rushed to the scene and found Adorno lying on the floor near the restaurant bathrooms. Police said he'd been stabbed several times in the chest and arm and collapsed inside McDonald's while witnesses applied pressure to his wounds.

"He felt as though his hands were literally on Adorno's heart due to the severity of the wound," police wrote of one of the witnesses in the arrest affidavit.

Adorno was pronounced dead a short time later at Indian River Medical Center, according to police.

Police said Cruz tossed the murder weapon into the bushes at McDonald's while running across the street to a Burger King restaurant. He threw his shirt and a second knife into the garbage there, and officers took him into custody.

According to police, Cruz admitted to stabbing Adorno and said he felt threatened but didn't see any weapons on the victim. Cruz told police the two did not know each other and had never spoken.

Police said it wasn't their first encounter with Cruz.

"We dealt with him actually the night before. He called us from Burger King right across the street and he told responding officers that individuals were looking for him or were after him," said Vero Beach Police Chief David Currey.

Family members said Adorno biked from Maine to Maryland with his sister last summer. He was two days and 100 miles away from completing the second leg of his trip, from Maryland to Miami.

They said Adorno, an athlete and animal lover who owned a graphic design company, was planning to propose to his girlfriend and was on the phone with her when Cruz attacked.

"The last thing she heard was the phone drop and then shortly thereafter the sound of sirens in the background," police wrote in the affidavit.

Cruz has been charged with first-degree murder and is being held without bond.