READING, Pa. \u2013 A family in Reading is pleading for help after a father was stabbed in plain daylight.\u00a0<\/p>\n
A man chased his American dream with a hopeful heart, but his journey was tragically cut short.<\/p>\n
“He didn’t deserve a death like that, like some street criminal \u2014 a hardworking person like my brother,\u201d said Nancy Mercado Gomez.<\/p>\n
Leonardo Mercado Gomez, 56, was leaving work at Sun Rich Foods in Reading on May 9 at 2 in the afternoon.<\/p>\n
“It happened in broad daylight,\u201d said Jos\u00e9 Gomez Guzman.<\/p>\n
Without warning, he was stabbed to death on River Road.<\/p>\n
“My dad was talking to my uncle on the phone when he was attacked,\u201d said Gomez Guzman. \u201cThat’s why we know someone attacked him without saying a word.”<\/p>\n
A father of four, a son, and a grandfather ripped away from his loved ones \u2014 just three months after arriving in the U.S. from the Dominican Republic.<\/p>\n
“When the police officers told me my dad was stabbed 12 times, I couldn’t believe it,\u201d said Leonardo Gomez Guzman.<\/p>\n
His killer remains at large.<\/p>\n
“If he were to give a reason, I would say today, \u2018OK, my brother behaved badly,\u2019 but he was a man who knew how to value and respect others,\u201d Mercado Gomez said. \u201cThis harmful person who did this is part of a plague \u2014 bad people hurting hardworking people.”<\/p>\n
His family describes him as a loving and dedicated man, always teaching his children the value of hard work and respect.<\/p>\n
“He was 56 when that happened, but he never got in trouble,\u201d said Gomez Guzman. \u201cI don’t have one story of my dad in trouble or fighting anyone.”<\/p>\n
“He always worked. My brother and I learned from him, if you want to get something you need to work for it. Nothing in life is free,\u201d said Gomez Guzman.<\/p>\n
His family, united in love and pain, pleads for help finding the man who took Leonardo’s life.<\/p>\n
“As a family, we are deeply hurt by the damage he has done to us, damage that we will never be able to repair. We want him to be given a life sentence,\u201d Mercado Gomez said.<\/p>\n
Anyone with information is asked to contact the Reading Police Department.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"READING, Pa. \u2013 A family in Reading is pleading for help after a father was stabbed in plain…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":203233,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[86137,28,736,128,130,129,2794],"class_list":["post-203232","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-reading","tag-leonardo-mercado-gomez","tag-pennsylvania","tag-reading","tag-reading-city","tag-reading-city-headlines","tag-reading-city-news","tag-stabbing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203232","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=203232"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203232\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/203233"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=203232"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=203232"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=203232"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}