A 91-year-old man was found bound and apparently beaten to death behind his Bronx home Tuesday, police sources said.
A 911 call reporting a robbery sent cops to the home of Nicolo Rappa on Wickham Ave. near Waring Ave. in Pelham Gardens about 12:30 p.m., sources said.
There, they found Rappa bound by the hands and unconscious in a garage-turned-storage shed behind his home, officials said.
A towel was placed over his head, cops said.
“His tenant found him in the garage. His tenant came out and saw the garage open,” said a neighbor, Robert D’Alessandro, 64. “He started calling ‘Nick! Nick!’ And he saw him in the rear, tied up and dead.”
Police sources said a relative of the downstairs tenant interrupted the suspect and confronted the man, who ran to a parked white Ford pick-up truck and drove off.
Rappa had several fresh bruises to his face, as if he had been beaten, and suffered a deep cut to his right arm, said the sources.
He was declared dead at the scene. An autopsy has been scheduled to determine how he died.
Rappa was robbed outside his house just a few months ago, D’Alessandro said. “I wonder if this has anything to do with it,” the neighbor said.
Rappa was a veteran construction worker who was living out his retirement caring for his 96-year-old wife, Anna, neighbors said. Every Sunday, he attended mass at Holy Rosary Church, D’Alessandro said.
“He built Co-op City. He used to tell us stories about working there. He took care of his wife,” said Paul Dock, 46, also a construction worker. “She could only go from her bed to the kitchen table. He was a good man.”
Witnesses described the victim’s attacker as a black man wearing an orange and white construction vest, cops said.
No arrests have been made.
“Whoever did this has no conscience,” D’Alessandro said. “They deserve a slow, painful death.”
