{"id":315159,"date":"2026-10-27T08:08:58","date_gmt":"2026-10-27T08:08:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/315159\/"},"modified":"2026-10-27T08:08:58","modified_gmt":"2026-10-27T08:08:58","slug":"berks-da-holds-news-conference-on-deadly-reading-stabbing-shares-lack-of-motive-reading-area","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/315159\/","title":{"rendered":"Berks DA holds news conference on deadly Reading stabbing, shares lack of motive | Reading Area"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>READING, Pa. &#8211; Berks County District Attorney John Adams held a news conference Monday morning providing an update on an arrest in a deadly stabbing in Reading.<\/p>\n<p>Police <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.wfmz.com\/news\/area\/berks\/reading-area\/man-faces-1st-degree-murder-charge-in-connection-with-broad-daylight-fatal-stabbing\/article_8d25769f-4b0e-46f4-9ae5-548155205fda.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">arrested Oliver Paniagua Pena<\/a> last week and charged him with first-degree murder for the fatal stabbing of Leonardo Mercado Gomez. Police said DNA evidence led to Paniagua Pena\u2019s arrest.<\/p>\n<p>Officials said Monday they haven\u2019t found a motive for the killing, and the two men didn\u2019t have any known problems with each other.<\/p>\n<p>Court documents say the two men worked at the same business.<\/p>\n<p>On May 9 at 2 p.m., Mercado-Gomez, 56, was leaving work at Sun Rich Foods when, without warning, he was stabbed to death on River Road, his family shared following the incident.<\/p>\n<p>Officers from the Reading Police Department previously said they responded to the 200 block of River Road and found Mercado-Gomez, suffering from multiple stab wounds.<\/p>\n<p>EMS transported Mercado-Gomez to Reading Hospital, where he was later pronounced dead, officials said.<\/p>\n<p>\nCopyright 2026 Maranatha Broadcasting Co., Inc.. All Rights Reserved.\n<\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"READING, Pa. &#8211; Berks County District Attorney John Adams held a news conference Monday morning providing an update&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":315160,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[349,1055,86137,69364,127692,736,128,130,129,2794],"class_list":["post-315159","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-reading","tag-berks-county","tag-john-adams","tag-leonardo-mercado-gomez","tag-michael-petrino-jr","tag-oliver-paniagua-pena","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\/315159","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=315159"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315159\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/315160"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=315159"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=315159"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=315159"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}