New York Daily News

Super vs. lowlifes

Man, son bashed trying to run off dealers

- BY ROCCO PARASCANDO­LA, NICHOLAS WILLIAMS AND CATHY BURKE

They’re the “good guys” on their Bronx block — and it cost them dearly.

An elderly building super and his son were mercilessl­y mauled after confrontin­g a pair of men hanging outside the apartment in what the super believed was an attempt to peddle drugs, authoritie­s said Monday.

The grisly 1:15 a.m. beatdown Sunday in front of a building on Davidson Ave. and W. 190th St. — captured on video — sent super Sylverio Serrena, 64, to the hospital with gashes on his face, including cuts in his left eye that required stitches.

Son Aquilio Urena, 42, was punched, but not seriously injured.

Both were treated and released from a nearby hospital.

“He got up the nerve to confront them,” a source said of Serrena. “The suspects were goosing him, verbally, trying to instigate him. He actually takes the first swing. He misses. He’s an old man.

“Then they tune him up.”

The angry confrontat­ion with two men quickly escalated into a gruesome attack on the father and son by at least five fist-throwing assailants, police said.

Urena told the Daily News that he was “shaken up” by the violence, but had worried about his three children who “come in and out of the building. I want them to be safe.”

He also said that in another incident Sunday, a menacing stranger came up to him and warned that he’d “better watch out” for himself and his family.

A source told The News that Serrena believed the pair of men hanging outside the building were just there to try and sell drugs.

Serrena told The News he’d let the “video speak for itself.”

“It’s not easy for the supers, these are the good guys,” fellow super Armando Vega, 35, told The News. “It only happened because he wanted these guys not to be around, to get the hell out of here.”

“He’s a strong dude,” Armando said of Serrena.

Police said they’re looking for five suspects, all between 20 and 30 years old.

 ??  ?? Sylverio Serrena (r.), the super of a building on Davidson Ave. in the Bronx, was brutally beaten after he and his son Aquilio Urena (above) confronted a group of men Serrena believed were selling drugs.
Sylverio Serrena (r.), the super of a building on Davidson Ave. in the Bronx, was brutally beaten after he and his son Aquilio Urena (above) confronted a group of men Serrena believed were selling drugs.

Newspapers in English

Newspapers from United States