Popular Merchant Stabbed to Death By WILLIAM WICHERT
Around midnight, Juan Madera was returning home from another hard day's work at Los Compadres, a bodega on the corner of 213th Street and Bainbridge Avenue, when three men in ski masks approached him and his two companions. After leaving the elevator, one of the attackers, who had ridden up with him, pushed the three men into the fourth floor hallway where they met two others. The attackers bound the three men in duct tape and demanded the keys to Madera's apartment. With his wife and two sons sleeping inside, Madera said he did not have the keys. The attackers stole $140 and whatever jewelry they could find on the three men, but not before stabbing Madera in the stomach. The police reached the scene at 12:53 a.m. and Madera was rushed to St. Barnabas Hospital, where he died at 3:40 a.m. The memory of this hard-working family man still reverberates around the neighborhood where local residents continue to stop outside his memorial at the bodega. A collection of candles and flowers sits below a wall mural that has been created in Madera's honor. Friends and strangers look on and read the accompanying news article, simply saying, "I can't believe this." "He was a good person. He didn't bother nobody," said Ruben Romana, who also lives at 3593 Bainbridge Ave. Romana, who got to know Madera after he started the bodega here seven years ago, has decorated his lower right arm with a tattoo of a cross and his friend's name. "I considered him my best friend," Romana said. "He was just a working guy trying to make it from day to day," said Miguel Rojas, one of the two men who accompanied Madera on the night of the murder. Rojas, another resident at 3593 Bainbridge, plans to gather the tenants together to seek out more security in the building. While a security call box is attached to the locked front door, Rojas would like to see security cameras in the building as well as a greater police presence at night. The police investigation is ongoing.
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A beloved owner of a local
bodega was stabbed to death last week while protecting his family from
three robbers trying to break into his nearby apartment at 3593 Bainbridge
Ave.