A top Central American diplomat was found dead with his throat slashed in the Bronx Thursday when his driver came to take him to the United Nations, police said.
Nicaraguan Consul César Antonio Mercado Pavón, 34, died in his apartment on the Grand Concourse near E. 180th St. A neighbor heard loud noises in the sixth-floor apartment overnight.
Mercado, quiet and well-regarded, had been the Nicaraguan consul for eight years, tending to visas, trade missions and the concerns of New York’s small Nicaraguan expat community.
Driver Edgar Hernandez told police he waited for Mercado to come downstairs around 10:30a.m. When Mercado didn’t come outside, the anxious driver went upstairs and made the grisly discovery. He found the body, fully clothed and covered with blood, just inside the apartment doorway.
Hernandez told detectives the door was closed but unlocked.
Police found two knives – a 12-inch steak knife on the side of a bloody sink and a small paring knife in the sink – sources said.
Besides the cuts on his neck, Mercado also had stab wounds in the abdomen, they said.
Furniture was overturned, but there were no signs of robbery or forced entry, suggesting that if the diplomat was murdered, he might have known his killer.
Cops were looking into whether a tryst went bad, combing through Mercado’s computer and phone records. They were also searching for a stranger’s fingerprints in the apartment. Security cameras in the hallway haven’t worked for two years, residents said.
Despite the discovery of the knives, cops haven’t ruled out suicide.
Miguel Figueroa, 19, who lives in the apartment directly below Mercado’s, told the Daily News he heard a commotion around 3 a.m.
“I heard somebody banging on the wall. But I didn’t pay attention,” he said.
The building super, Marash Camaj, 27, told The News that the consul had lived alone in the sparsely furnished studio apartment for about four years.
“I didn’t know he was a diplomat until today. I just thought he was an immigrant from Latin America,” Camaj said. “All I know is he was a great guy, a great human being.”
Kirk Jiminez, 46, said Mercado did homeless and HIV outreach in the Nicaraguan community.
“He helped people,” said Jiminez of the Bronx. “He works tirelessly for the community.”
Mercado lived for years with his good friend, Amparo Amador, 57, who mourned him yesterday like her own kin.
“I always said, ‘You are my son in New York.’ My heart is broken,” she said.
Amador said she danced with Mercado at a wedding in Brooklyn three weeks ago. He seemed happy. But he began acting oddly morbid lately.
“Beginning six months ago, he told me, ‘Don’t let them have a funeral for me here if I die. I want a closed casket, just send me to my mother,'” Amador said. He repeated the grim request two weeks ago, she said.
Mercado was apparently heading to the annual gathering of the General Assembly at UN Headquarters. A black SUV with a diplomatic plate reading “consul” parked outside the building had the day’s General Assembly agenda on the front passenger seat.
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