By The Diary
Sep 25, 2024, 00:46 AM EDT
Leslie Sanchez, a 56-year-old fruit vendor, died two days after being beaten during an attempted robbery on a street in the Bronx (NYC).
Two men have been charged with murder in connection with the attack that occurred on September 12 at around 7:30 p.m., New York police announced yesterday. Sanchez, a father of three, was attacked so brutally that his face was left “almost unrecognizable,” his wife told the Associated Press. News12 at that time. He died two days later.
Romel Jarrett, 37, and Terrence Downes (44) were named as suspects the day after the attack, initially charged with attempted murder and first-degree assault. The charges have now been upgraded, following the death being classified as a homicide by the city’s Medical Examiner’s Office (OCME).
A 56-year-old Bronx fruit vendor killed by a beating with a baseball bat during an attempted robbery was usually nonconfrontational in the face of thefts, said fellow vendors in the Fordham neighborhood. https://t.co/LxemtkxfB9
— New York Daily News (@NYDailyNews) September 25, 2024
Police say Jarrett and Downes initially tried to rob Sanchez near East Fordham Road and the Grand Concourse, but when Sanchez resisted they repeatedly hit him with a metal baseball bat in the back of the head, police said. Daily News.
All charges are merely accusations and the defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.
In a similar case, last month a Latina nurse was killed when she was tripped by a young man who was running away, hitting her head outside her home in Harlem, Manhattan. In early September, Benjamin Bernal, a 58-year-old Mexican immigrant and father of five, died a month after being brutally beaten on a sidewalk in the Bronx (NYC).
Random street attacks have become common in New York, including against women and the elderly. This month, an 81-year-old woman was beaten in broad daylight while walking her son’s dog on the Upper West Side of Manhattan (NYC).
In July, a 14-year-old boy was arrested on suspicion of “randomly” hitting a 58-year-old woman with a baseball bat in Lower Manhattan (NYC). In April, another 16-year-old boy was arrested on suspicion of pushing a woman down a flight of stairs and then robbing her as she entered her church for Sunday mass in Queens (NYC).
In March, Mexican Domingo Tapia died after spending almost seven years in a coma after a stranger hit him on a street in Brooklyn (NYC).