Longtime NYC fruit vendor fatally beaten with baseball bat in ‘cold-hearted’ attack: cops

Two brutes — including one who was busted for a separate assault last month — beat a longtime Bronx fruit vendor and father of three to death with a baseball bat in a “cold-hearted,” unprovoked attack earlier this month, cops and sources said.

Romel Jarrett, 37, and Terrence Downes, 44, wrestled 56-year-old Leslie Sanchez to the ground and bashed him in the head with the bat at his selling spot on East Fordham Road near the Grand Concourse in Morris Heights around 7:40 p.m. Sept. 12, according to authorities and a criminal complaint.

He was taken to St. Barnabas Hospital in critical condition, and succumbed to his injuries on Sept. 14, police said.

Law enforcement sources described the attack as unprovoked, but added that a witness reported seeing the attackers involved in a spat with the vendor.

“When I heard a street vendor was attacked on the street, I never thought it would have been him,” family friend and former neighbor Autumn Pearson told The Post Wednesday.

“He was a peaceful guy.”

Sanchez and his wife had two boys and a girl, the youngest son only a baby, Pearson said.

“He was a good father,” Pearson said.

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“He took care of his family. He was the husband, he was the father…everything he did was for his family. This is just so sad. It was so cold-hearted. It was senseless. He just had a baby boy!”

When asked about Sanchez’s wife, Pearson simply said, “She’s doing OK,” but declined to elaborate.

Sanchez initially hoped to sell fruit near his home on Grant Avenue, where he’d lived for two years, before settling on the East Fordham Road location, Pearson said.

“He had been at that corner for five years. He thought of the idea to sell fruits and vegetables right here,” the family friend said.

“He went out and bought a white truck and that’s how he started.”

Sanchez was beaten so badly that a fedora-like hat was placed on him in his coffin to hide the damage done from the brutal assault, Pearson said.

He has since been cremated.

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Pearson described Sanchez as a dedicated father.

“All he did was work and come home to his family,” she said.

“When the kids were younger, he bought them little cars and sat outside on the steps and watched them drive around. Once his daughter wouldn’t stop, he had to chase her down the street.”

Pearson placed a sign in the window of Sanchez’s former building in memory of the well-loved victim.

“RIP Poppy Street Vendor Sanchez. Miss you,” it said, with a photo of the slain salesman in the middle.

Two flowers bordered the sign on each side, and three small electric candles lined the windowsill.

“I’m going to remember the joy and love he had for his kids and his wife, the compassion he had for his friends and people in general,” the former neighbor added of Sanchez.

“I’m going to miss him a lot. I used to go out there and talk to him while he was selling.”

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She said Sanchez was always willing to help her during any time of need.

“If I needed money…whatever I needed, he’d help me out,” she recalled.

“He was an all-out good guy. He was the ideal ‘love thy neighbor’ type of person.”

Jarrett and Downes were arrested a day before Sanchez’s death and arraigned on the charges of second-degree attempted murder and first-degree assault.

The charges could be upgraded when they are arraigned on a new indictment Oct. 15, the Bronx DA’s Office said.

“I just want justice for Leslie,” Pearson said.

“As long as they catch them, they are behind bars and stay behind bars, that makes me feel a little better. The City is safer now that these people are off the streets.”

Romel has two prior arrests, one for third-degree assault last month in the Bronx, and the other for a May 2022 petit larceny in the same borough, cops said.

Police could not immediately give details on Romel’s bust last month.

Downes was most recently busted for criminal possession of a controlled substance in East Harlem in 2018 — but his rap sheet also includes an attempted murder bust from December 2002 in Brooklyn, cops said.

He was nabbed in 2001 for a Brooklyn assault, and faced another drug possession bust in Brooklyn two years earlier, authorities said.

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