{"id":26175,"date":"2025-11-02T21:44:10","date_gmt":"2025-11-02T21:44:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/26175\/"},"modified":"2025-11-02T21:44:10","modified_gmt":"2025-11-02T21:44:10","slug":"chef-bludgeoned-to-death-by-bronx-roommate-after-complaining-to-friends-about-living-situation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/26175\/","title":{"rendered":"Chef bludgeoned to death by Bronx roommate after complaining to friends about living situation"},"content":{"rendered":"

A 35-year-old chef bludgeoned to death<\/a> by his roommate inside their Bronx NYCHA apartment had been complaining to friends in recent weeks about his uncomfortable living situation, the Daily News has learned<\/p>\n

Miguel Batiz<\/a> was bashed in the head with some sort of object inside his home in NYCHA\u2019s Edenwald Houses about 4:00 a.m. Oct. 23, authorities say. A squabble with his 67-year-old roommate culminated in the slaying inside their building on E. 229th St. near Laconia Ave., according to cops.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe always had trouble with his roommate situation,\u201d the victim\u2019s high school friend Eric Burgos said. \u201cHe was always posting on his [Facebook] story asking if anyone knew someone looking for a roommate and saying how he wanted to get out of his situation. That was over the past six months or so.\u201d<\/p>\n

Batiz\u2019s roommate\u00a0Enoch Rosado<\/a> was arrested later on the day of the slaying and charged with murder, manslaughter and weapon possession.<\/p>\n

When cops found Batiz badly bloodied and dead at the scene they initially believed he had been been stabbed multiple times \u2014 but ultimately his cause of death was determined to be blunt force trauma to the head, police said Sunday. Prosecutors say he was struck in the head with an object.<\/p>\n

The shock slay left the victim\u2019s friends wondering if they had missed signs of serious trouble.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wish I took those (Facebook) posts more seriously because he posted them pretty frequently,\u201d said Burgos, 37. \u201cI kind of was like, \u2018Oh he was just kind of venting.\u2019 But I had no idea he would end up in this type of situation.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"MiguelMiguel Batiz with his friend Dwane\u00e9 Bowden. (Courtesy of Dwane\u00e9 Bowden)<\/p>\n

Stable housing had long been an issue for the victim.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was adopted so he always moved from apartment to apartment. He never stayed in the same place. People set roots, but he didn\u2019t have that,\u201d said Dwane\u00e9 Bowden, a college friend of the victim.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere were times where I wanted him to live with us but he didn\u2019t want to be a burden. I was like, \u2018No you should come. I don\u2019t want to see you living with random people and moving around a lot.\u2019 That was one thing that I was concerned about, just his safety and making sure that nobody harmed him.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bowden remembered Batiz as a fun-loving guy who took pride in cooking Puerto Rican food for his many friends.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was just a giving person. He would feed everybody. We had a lot of parties and he was always in charge of the parties, cooking and putting the drink in everyone\u2019s hand,\u201d she said. \u201cWe\u2019re gonna miss him a lot. He was just very smart, laid back and chill.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"NYCHA'sNYCHA’s Edenwald Houses in the Bronx. (Howard Simmons\/New York Daily News)<\/p>\n

\u201cHe wanted to fall in love real bad. He wanted to have children and get married. He wanted that love that he didn\u2019t receive, I guess, from being adopted and moving around and just trying to figure out and navigate his life,\u201d Bowden added.<\/p>\n

\u201c(Rosado) gypped him of a good life. (Batiz) was only 35 years old. This man was 67 years old so, even if justice is served, he\u2019s about to die soon. He\u2019s an old man. I feel like he got to live his life, whether he made bad decisions or not, and my friend just got his life cut short.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cops said it was not immediately clear what the pair\u2019s disagreement was about but friends say they can\u2019t picture Batiz being the aggressor.<\/p>\n

\u201cI know Miguel. He wouldn\u2019t have done anything to entice that kind of behavior. He can be slick at the mouth, like any New Yorker, but he was never one to incite violence,\u201d said Kori Francis, another of the victim\u2019s close college friends. \u201cHe was very much all about either cooking or having a good time. That was all he was about.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"MiguelVictim Miguel Batiz<\/p>\n

Francis, 35, who attended culinary school at Monroe College with Batiz, said he and the victim had looked forward to one day being in each other\u2019s weddings and having their future kids play football together.<\/p>\n

Batiz worked as a cook in a number of restaurants through the years. He also sold hot chocolate and slushy drinks at Yankee Stadium to pick up extra cash \u2014 and more importantly to catch a glimpse of the games.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was the biggest Yankees fan so any way he could be at a game, he would,\u201d said Francis.<\/p>\n

\"MiguelVictim Miguel Batiz<\/p>\n

Batiz studied culinary arts in Italy for several months in college and had hopes of studying his craft abroad again.<\/p>\n

The victim \u201cwanted his name to mean something in the culinary world,\u201d Francis said.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe won\u2019t get a chance to experience any of that,\u201d he added. \u201c[Rosado] took honestly one of the brightest people, in terms of the light you bring into the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"AThe funeral for Miguel Batiz on Oct. 30. (Photo by Dwane\u00e9 Bowden)<\/p>\n

Rosado was ordered held without bail when he was arraigned in Bronx Criminal Court and is due back in court Nov. 13. He has more than 30 prior arrests<\/a>, most of them drug related, PIX11 News reported.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know exactly what was the straw that broke the camel\u2019s back,\u201d Francis said of the suspect. \u201cBut whatever it was couldn\u2019t have been more important than (Batiz\u2019s) life. I hope, and I know this sounds petty, but I hope (the suspect) burns in hell.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A 35-year-old chef bludgeoned to death by his roommate inside their Bronx NYCHA apartment had been complaining to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":26176,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[128,262,263,266,85,267,9,24,264,12,63,261,265,129,131,130],"class_list":{"0":"post-26175","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-the-bronx","8":"tag-bronx","9":"tag-city","10":"tag-county","11":"tag-crime-and-public-safety","12":"tag-latest-headlines","13":"tag-local-news","14":"tag-new-york","15":"tag-new-york-city","16":"tag-new-york-county","17":"tag-news","18":"tag-nyc","19":"tag-nyc-crime","20":"tag-sub-county-region","21":"tag-the-bronx","22":"tag-the-bronx-headlines","23":"tag-the-bronx-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26175","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26175"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26175\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26176"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26175"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26175"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26175"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}