{"id":314297,"date":"2026-10-26T03:28:12","date_gmt":"2026-10-26T03:28:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/314297\/"},"modified":"2026-10-26T03:28:12","modified_gmt":"2026-10-26T03:28:12","slug":"reading-man-charged-in-fatal-may-stabbing-on-river-road","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/314297\/","title":{"rendered":"Reading man charged in fatal May stabbing on River Road"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Reading man has been arrested and charged with fatally stabbing a man walking home<\/a> from work along River Road in May.<\/p>\n

Oliver Paniagua-Pena, 39, was charged with first- and third-degree murder, and two counts each of aggravated and simple assault, and possessing an instrument of crime.<\/p>\n

He was arraigned Thursday in front of District Judge F. Richard Drumheller and placed in Berks County Jail without bail.<\/p>\n

Paniagua-Pena is accused of stabbing Leonardo Mercado-Gomez on May 9 as Mercado-Gomez walked home from his job at the Sun Rich Foods plant.<\/p>\n

According to police:<\/p>\n

Reading police responded to the 200 block of River Road about 2:45 p.m. on May 9 for a report of a man lying in the street with what appeared to be stab wounds on his back.<\/p>\n

Mercado-Gomez was taken to Reading Hospital where he later died.<\/p>\n

An examination of Mercado-Gomez\u2019s body done by a doctor at the hospital found multiple, deep stab wounds to his head, face and back. Additional stab wounds were found on his left hand.<\/p>\n

Police viewed surveillance camera footage from the area and saw Mercado-Gomez crossing the intersection of West Buttonwood Street and River Road. As he crossed, a person dressed all in black and wearing a balaclava-style mask was seen on a bicycle near the intersection.<\/p>\n

As Mercado-Gomez continued to walk on River Road, the other man can be seen cycling quickly toward him. Both of them move out of view of cameras.<\/p>\n

Police also spoke to a relative of Mercado-Gomez\u2019s who lives in the Dominican Republic and was speaking to Mercado-Gomez as he walked.<\/p>\n

The relative described hearing yelling and a commotion, as well as Mercado-Gomez yelling, \u201cI didn\u2019t do anything to you. Oh my God.\u201d<\/p>\n

The battery-powered bicycle was found near the crime scene.<\/p>\n

Police collected DNA evidence from the bicycle, and results returned last month could not exclude Paniagua-Pena as a suspect.<\/p>\n

It was discovered that Paniagua-Pena worked at Sun Rich Foods, the same company that employed Mercado-Gomez. Another employee told police that the two worked at workstations only a few feet apart.<\/p>\n

Time clock records showed Paniagua-Pena left work about 15 minutes before Mercado-Gomez. A witness who worked at Sun Rich Foods told police that Paniagua-Pena was known to ride a bicycle that matched the description of the one found at the crime scene.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Reading man has been arrested and charged with fatally stabbing a man walking home from work along…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":314298,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[349,202,182,139,28,736,128,130,129,706],"class_list":["post-314297","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-reading","tag-berks-county","tag-crime-and-public-safety","tag-local-news","tag-news","tag-pennsylvania","tag-reading","tag-reading-city","tag-reading-city-headlines","tag-reading-city-news","tag-top-stories-reg"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314297","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=314297"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314297\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/314298"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=314297"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=314297"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=314297"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}