Roomie begged NYC man slain by car service driver to give up booze (EXCLUSIVE)

The roommate of a Brooklyn man beaten to death in a boozy fight with a car service driver had long tried to get the victim to give up alcohol — and waited three days for him to come home before learning of his senseless slaying.

Victim Carlos Guman and his cousin shared drinks with the driver before getting into the fatal punch-up with him, prosecutors said.

“He got drunk once in a while but didn’t bother anybody,” Raffaele Iervasi, 87, who lived with Guaman, 66, in Dyker Heights for the last two years, said of the victim.

“He’d come home and go to bed, go to work every day. I always tell him, I say ‘Carlos don’t drink! Somebody gonna catch you and he’s gonna hurt you.’ He was a big strong man. He says, ‘Nobody’s gonna touch me.’ He was built like a bulldog.”

Early Thursday, Iervasi’s worries became reality when police say Guaman and his cousin, Gilberto Guiracocha, 52, were pummeled by car service driver Sergio Zamora Mendoza, 33, on W. 9th St. near Avenue T in Gravesend. They were being dropped off at Guiracocha’s home when the clash with the driver erupted.

Mendoza, who’s charged with manslaughter, was ordered held on $750,000 bond during his arraignment proceeding in Brooklyn Criminal Court Saturday.

Mendoza’s lawyer called the killing an act of self-defense. Guaman and his cousin were leaving a party, where both had been drinking, and asked Mendoza to drive them from “bar to bar,” defense lawyer Timothy McCubbin said.

“The defendant picked up the two of them around four in the morning and they drove to a gas station and drank alcohol together — the three of them — for around 45 minutes before continuing on their journey,” Assistant District Attorney Jordan Rossman said at Mendoza’s arraignment.

While at the gas station the cousins noticed how much cash the driver was carrying, according to the defense lawyer.,

The duo told Mendoza “maybe he should give them the money he has” and the younger cousin pushed and shoulder checked the driver before Guaman swung at him, McCubbin claimed.

Guaman was a devoted family man who sent money back to his wife and three adult children in Ecuador, his roommate said.

“Three days I don’t see him. I tried to call him on the phone and I didn’t receive an answer,” the roommate recounted. “And then all of a sudden I heard it on the news … He was a wonderful guy.”

Guiracocha told a friend that he and Guaman went from a party to a bar and flagged down Mendoza’s car.

“He said it was over the overcharge. He said he and his cousin, they were arguing with the driver over the overcharge,” said Guiracocha’s friend, who declined to give his name. “They were telling (Mendoza), ‘We’re gonna call the cops.’”

The friend knew Gauman well too.

“They don’t do drugs. They work,” the friend said of the cousins. “They always used to play volleyball.”

But the friend, who works as a taxi driver, understands how Mendoza could have felt threatened.

“We feel like we’re protecting ourselves. These guys are trying to call the cops, trying to scare him. It’s two guys not one. And they’re drunk,” he said. “We (taxi drivers) go outside to work, sometimes we don’t know if we’ll come back.”

“I’m not saying what (the driver) did was right, no,” he added.

Guaman did tile work in Manhattan, Staten Island, Brooklyn and New Jersey, his roommate said.

“He was very busy. He was a good professional tile man,” Iervasi said.

He also took on an apprentice, Cristy Rizo, 36.

“He was an excellent teacher in the art of ceramic construction,” Rizo said. “He was one of my best friends.”

Iervasi said he was still processing the loss of his roommate.

” I’m gonna miss him. He was good to me. He was a good person. I don’t know what happened,” he said. “Maybe they were drunk? Maybe they don’t want to pay the taxi driver? I don’t know what happened. How could this happen? I don’t understand.”

Regarding Mendoza, the roommate said, “He should be hung … He beat them up and left. Terrible. It’s terrible to kill someone like that.”

With Colin Mixson