TV hunk JUAN PABLO fears he’s gang target after brutal DOUBLE SLAYING!
BACHELOR” star Juan Pablo Galavis is telling pals he won’t go back home to violence-torn Venezuela with his beloved 4-year-old daughter Camila because he’s terrified she could be kidnapped or killed.
“Juan Pablo knows because of his fame from ‘The Bachelor,’ there’s now a target on their back,” revealed a friend.
The 32-year-old reality star, who has lived most of his life in the South American country, was horrified when vicious Venezuelan bandits murdered local soap star/ former beauty queen Monica Spear on Jan. 6 during an apparent robbery.
Spear, 29, and her ex-husband Henry Thomas Berry, 39, were on a vacation with their 5-year-old daughter Maya when all hell broke loose. Bloodthirsty thugs booby-trapped the road, puncturing the tires of the family’s car, then riddled it with bullets.
Sadly, only little Maya survived – with a gunshot wound to her leg.
“Juan Pablo is just sick over Monica’s death,” said the source. “He desperately wanted to take Camila to Venezuela to show her where he grew up – but it just isn’t safe.”
Incredibly, the oil-rich country has one of the highest murder rates in the world – so bad that most Venezuelans stay home after dark.
Said the source: “Juan Pablo told a pal, ‘Monica’s daughter is around the same age as mine and she was almost killed. I cannot risk having that happen to Camila!’”
The Miami-based “Bachelor” hunk was so shaken by the double murder that he sprang into action to get remaining family members out of Venezuela. While his parents and brother already live in the U.S., his pregnant sister still resides in their home country.
But it’s been painful for Juan Pablo to turn his back on Venezuela, where he has deep ties and played professional soccer for several seasons. He retired from the game after Camila was born in February 2009 to his then-girlfriend, Latina actress Carla Rodriguez, saying he didn’t want to be an absentee father to his daughter, who was living in Miami.
But as THE ENQUIRER revealed two weeks ago, court documents show that even after moving to the U.S., the blue-eyed heartthrob was a deadbeat dad following his split from Carla. A judge ordered him in May 2011 to pay more than $3,500 in back child support.
NEW 'BACHELOR' DEADBEAT DAD SHAME
Despite his problems in the U.S., Juan Pablo vows to stay out of Venezuela. He declared: “I don’t want anything to do with the country until it gets better.”