Detectives in Vero Beach say a homeless man attacked and stabbed a bicyclist from Connecticut at a local McDonald's before fleeing to a Burger King across the street. 
 
 Victim: Kevin Adorno Photos Rene Herrera Cruz Photos 
 
 Rene Herrera Cruz was taken into custody late Monday night. Police said he ditched the bloody 12-inch blade in a nearby bush. 
 
 The victim, 28-year-old Kevin Adorno, died from his injuries. 
 
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 According to Vero Beach police, Adorno had stopped at the McDonald's during his cross-country bicycle trip to charge his phone and get something to eat. 
 
 Adorno started his journey in Maryland, and was on his way to Miami, when he was suddenly attacked by the homeless man. 
 
 "He happened to stop here in Vero Beach, grabbed a bite to eat, and was charging his cell phone," said Police Chief David Currey. 
 
 "He got on the phone with his girlfriend, who we understand he was going to propose to be married. He was talking to her, and Mr. Cruz approached him in the parking lot and killed him." 
 
 On his Facebook page, Adorno boasts about starting the cross country trip, which police said was on his bucket list. He owned a graphic design business, Bevy Promotions and Media, based in Hartford, Connecticut. 
 
 Upon arrest, Cruz told detectives that he believed Adorno was on the phone with people who wanted to attack him. As it turns out, police said, Adorno was on the phone with his soon-to-be finance. He was set to propose once he arrived in Miami. 
 
 According to a Vero Beach police press release, Adorno was stabbed multiple times and began to bleed out on the bathroom floor of the McDonald's. First responders attempted to render aid while officers searched for the suspect. 
 
 According to the release, "Cruz admitted to stabbing Adorno. He stated that he thought Adorno was directing other people via cell phone to attack him and Cruz therefore felt threatened and attacked Adorno." 
 
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 "It was evident from the amount of blood that he had been stabbed several times in the chest and arm. Although EMS and Fire Rescue also assisted in the attempts to save Adorno; he succumbed to his wounds and was pronounced deceased a short time later at the IRMH." 
 
 Cruz, who has not yet been formally charged, was known to local police as a homeless man in the area. After the attack, police said he hid in the Burger King directly across the street. 
 
 McDonald's Owner Operator Joe Conrado has released the following statement: 
 
 “Our customers’ and employees’ safety is always our top priority. We are cooperating fully with the local authorities in their investigation of this tragic incident. It would be inappropriate to comment further as this is an ongoing police matter. Additional inquiries should be directed to the local authorities.” ||||| Farmington Man Fatally Stabbed On Bike Trip In Florida 
 
 Kevin Adorno Was Headed To Miami To Propose To Girlfriend 
 
 Kevin Adorno, 28, of the Unionville section of Farmington, suffered stab wounds to his chest and arms after an unprovoked attack, Vero Beach police said. He was taken to Indian River Medical Center where he was pronounced dead. 
 
 A Farmington man who was biking from Maryland to Miami, where he planned to proposed to his girlfriend, was stabbed to death on Monday night by a homeless man outside a McDonald's restaurant in Vero Beach, Fla., local police said Tuesday. 
 
 Police say they found Kevin Adorno of Unionville lying on the floor of a McDonald's… (Vero Beach Police Department ) 
 
 Police responded to the McDonald's on U.S. 1 about 9:30 p.m. following reports from a 911 caller that a customer had been stabbed. Adorno was found lying on the floor of the restaurant's bathroom. 
 
 Rene Herrera Cruz, 59, the man police say stabbed Adorno, was arrested across the street at a Burger King by Vero Beach police and the local sheriff's department. He was charged with first-degree murder, police said. 
 
 Witnesses told police they saw Adorno bike up to the McDonald's and enter the restaurant. He was later seen stepping outside the restaurant before the stabbing happened, according to the arrest affidavit for Cruz. 
 
 Witnesses told police that Adorno was outside when he was stabbed but came inside after the attack. He collapsed and they attempted to help him, according to the arrest affidavit. 
 
 One witness told police that he felt as though his hand was on Adorno's heart because of the severity of the stab wound. 
 
 Police spoke to Adorno's girlfriend, who said she was on the phone with him when the attack happened. She said she never heard any argument. The last thing she reported hearing was the phone drop, according to the arrest affidavit. 
 
 Cruz told police that he had spent a lot of time at the McDonald's after coming up to the area from Miami, according to the arrest affidavit. Cruz said he was concerned about people watching him at the McDonald's, including a customer inside the restaurant. 
 
 Cruz told police he'd never met Adorno and the two hadn't exchanged any words before the stabbing, according to the arrest affidavit. Cruz told police the reason for the attack was that Adorno was "directing the people to go after him." 
 
 Cruz said he took the knife from his waistband when someone began walking toward him, according to the arrest affidavit. After taking out the knife, the person saw it and ran and Cruz said he stabbed Adorno. 
 
 After stabbing Adorno, Cruz went across the street to the Burger King where he discarded the knife and his shirt in the garbage, according to the arrest affidavit. 
 
 Police said that Adorno was biking from Maryland to Miami. He was set to propose to his girlfriend when he got to Miami. ||||| VERO BEACH — Kevin Adorno stopped at a McDonald’s in Vero Beach Monday in the final days of his East Coast bicycling trip from Maryland to Miami. 
 
 Instead, the trek was cut short when the 28-year-old Connecticut man, standing outside the restaurant talking on his cellphone to his girlfriend, was fatally stabbed by a stranger, police said. 
 
 At least two diners in the fast food eatery saw the assault and watched the assailant run northeast across the 1900 block of U.S. 1, according to the affidavit. 
 
 Police said Adorno was still on the phone with his girlfriend when he was stabbed. She told an investigator she didn’t hear any sounds of a confrontation after Adorno stopped talking. According to an affidavit, the woman could hear the phone drop, then silence passed before she heard sirens. 
 
 Rene Herrera Cruz, 59, was apprehended without incident at Burger King — across the street from McDonald’s — shortly after the stabbing. Detectives charged him with first-degree murder. 
 
 Police said Cruz, a Cuban native, spent several years living in the Miami area but is now homeless and had recently relocated to Vero Beach. 
 
 Police Chief David Currey said his agency gets occasional loitering complaints about homeless people at that McDonald’s, but there haven’t been any major problems. 
 
 Investigators interviewed at least four witnesses at McDonald’s and talked with Adorno’s family members by phone in Connecticut. 
 
 Currey said Adorno’s bike trek was a “bucket list” item for the graphic designer from Unionville, Conn., who began bicycling south from Maryland last month. Currey said officers found the engagement ring on Adorno that he wanted to present to his girlfriend when the trip ended. 
 
 Adorno stumbled into McDonald’s, where one of the witnesses ran to his aid and another person called 911, the affidavit states. Police spokesman Officer John Morrison said Adorno had wounds to his chest and arm. 
 
 Paramedics took Adorno to Indian River Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead. 
 
 As Cruz fled, police said he tossed the knife used for the stabbing into a bush. Officers recovered the weapon and found Cruz at Burger King. 
 
 Detectives said Cruz admitted during questioning to committing the stabbing. Cruz told police he thought Adorno was directing other people by cellphone to attack him. He also told detectives someone inside McDonald’s was using a laptop computer to order someone to attack him. 
 
 The stabbing wasn’t the first encounter police had with Cruz during the Labor Day weekend. Sunday night, Currey said Cruz had called 911 in the vicinity of McDonald’s and told police he was afraid someone would try to hurt him. 
 
 Cruz has had several brushes with the law elsewhere, Currey said. In the 1990s, he had charges against him for battery, driving under the influence, marijuana possession and cocaine smuggling in Miami and Brooksville, police said. The Department of Corrections has no record that Cruz served prison time for those charges. 
 
 McDonald’s reopened Tuesday morning with drive-thru service only, then opened its dining room in the afternoon. The company referred all questions to police about the stabbing, but issued a statement Tuesday. 
 
 “Our customers’ and employees’ safety is always our top priority,” spokeswoman Susie Santana said. “We are cooperating fully with the authorities in their investigation of this tragic incident.” 
 
 On Adorno’s Facebook page, there’s a photo album marked “The Big Bike II” which shows photos of his journey south along the East Coast. The photos show highways, beaches and “Welcome To” signs for the states he crossed into. 
 
 On his website, mypencilportrait.com, Adorno wrote he had previously biked 700 miles from Bangor, Maine, to Chester, Maryland. Currey said the trip from Maryland to Miami would have completed his goal.
– Kevin Adorno set out from Maryland last month to complete an item from his bucket list: bicycling all the way to Florida. When he reached Miami, he planned to propose to his girlfriend. Instead, he was on the phone with her Monday night outside a Vero Beach McDonald's—less than 140 miles away—when he was fatally stabbed, allegedly by a homeless man. Rene Herrera Cruz, 59, told police who arrested him that he believed Adorno was on the phone with people who wanted to attack him, WPBF reports. But police say the attack was unprovoked and apparently random, and Cruz has been charged with first-degree murder. Cruz also admitted to hanging around at the McDonald's often, and said he worried that people were watching him there, the Hartford Courant reports; he'd called police from the same area the night before to complain that he thought someone would try to harm him. He said he'd never met or spoken to Adorno, but that he believed the 28-year-old Connecticut man was "directing the people to go after him," according to the arrest affidavit. Adorno's girlfriend told police she didn't hear an argument, just the phone dropping and then, eventually, sirens, TCPalm reports. Witnesses saw Adorno stumble inside the restaurant after being stabbed in the chest and arms and tried to help, but it was too late; police found him lying on the bathroom floor—carrying an engagement ring—and he was pronounced dead at a hospital. (Last month, a woman who beat cancer died in a freak "bucket list" fall.)