I KILLED HIM
Robber admits to Qns. bizman slay
A BANK ROBBER charged with killing a beloved 89-year-old Queens supermarket owner four years ago confessed to the heinous crime in gruesome detail at a federal trial against a former running buddy, officials said Saturday.
In the March trial against Ryan Quashie, murder suspect Harry Pacheco, 40, told a jury that he tied Damaso Llano to a chair and repeatedly zapped him with a stun gun while an accomplice “put his foot on his neck” during the 2012 murder.
“I tried to tie his hands and I couldn’t control his hands,” Pacheco said in court documents obtained by the Daily News. “So I Tasered the man about two or three times. I still couldn’t get him to stop screaming or hold his hands together. So I hit him about the face two times.”
“Then he laid still moaning,” Pacheco said.
Llano, the co-owner of the El Mundo Supermarket in Corona, was found beaten and handcuffed inside his 43rd Ave. home on March 26, 2012.
Pacheco was arrested breaking into a restaurant in Queens in September 2012 and was immediately linked to 14 violent bank robberies in which he would threaten tellers by banging a snub-nose revolver against the glass partition. He was given the nickname “The Snub-nosed Bandit” as a result. He pleaded guilty to the bank heists and was sentenced to five years in prison, officials said.
A few months later, in June 2013, he scored a sweetheart deal with the feds, where he would get a minimum of 10 years for several other robberies, as well as a few home invasions he committed with Quashie while they were dressed as cops or cable repairmen. The deal included Llano’s murder.
Pacheco admitted that he and an accomplice named, “Jesse” had robbed Llano before and heard that he kept money at his home. The two decided to sneak into Llano’s home dressed as police officers, but Llano quickly figured out their ruse.
“Jesse grabbed a hold of him in a chokehold,” Pacheco said.
The two bound Llano to a chair as they searched his home, then tased and beat him when he tried to break free, Pacheco said, according to court records. When they left empty handed, Llano was still alive, he said.
Quashie was not with Pacheco during the fatal home invasion. With Pacheco’s testimony, Quashie was convicted of several violent robberies in Queens— including a raid on a brothel, ,according to court papers.
Llano’s family wasn’t told about Pacheco until Friday. Officials did not disclose why it took more than three years to let the family know that Pacheco had confessed to the crime. The failure to do so didn’t bother Llano’s son.
“We’re just relieved as a family that justice has been done,” Llano’s son Eddie Llano said Saturday.