Police arrested two men for beating a homeless man, who later died from his injuries, in the parking lot of a Brooklyn ShopRite last month.
Manuel Perez, 49, and Francisco Corocoj, 25, were both cuffed Friday and charged with first-degree manslaughter, second-degree assault and fourth-degree criminal possession of a weapon, cops said.
The arrests come more than three weeks after Perez and Corocoj attacked Cos Jervis Jonas Ajpuac, 38, and a 42-year-old man in the parking lot of the McDonald Ave. supermarket near Elmwood Ave. in Borough Park around 7 p.m. on Sept. 18, police said.
The suspects battered both men with metal pipes and a baseball bat, cops said.
“They was hitting them real hard with the bats,” said Stephen DeGrasse, 25, a ShopRite security worker. “One of them had a metal bat and the other one had a cane maybe or it was like a regular stick.
DeGrasse described watching security footage that captured the attack as “brutal” and said the suspects took their victims by surprise.
“They just attacked them while they were sleeping,” he said.
Paramedics rushed the victims to Maimonides Medical Center, where Ajpuac later died on Oct. 2, according to law enforcement. The other man survived.
Ajpuac made a habit of cashing in recyclables at the supermarket and then using the proceeds to buy beer there, which he would often drink with friends outside before sleeping in the place’s parking lot, according to DeGrasse.
DeGrasse said Ajpuac was friendly with his killers prior to last month’s fatal assault.
“The same one that attacked him, they used to collect bottles together. They was friends,” DeGrasse said. “They all used to be downstairs with each other, collecting bottles, cashing in the bottles. They would come here, buy beer, drink the beer together.
“It was sad,” he added. “I know all of them. I go downstairs and I speak to them all the time. Sometimes I buy them food, chicken, bread, give them some water. I was just sad that I wasn’t here while it happened, because it happened as soon as I left.”
