The triangular imprints branded in Lenin Garcia's skin serve as a constant reminder of the day he thought he would die, and never see his toddler son again.
The Mount Eden bodega worker's back is still heavily scarred from when thugs scorched him with a clothing iron during a robbery in his apartment on a June night five years ago.
Now he's counting down the days when he will face his former landlord, Lew Bodak, in court in a $15 million civil lawsuit for not having any locks on the doors of his Grand Concourse building — allowing the vicious bandits to waltz right in.
"I want them to learn that they have to have security in their buildings," Garcia, 33, told the Daily News. "And to protect people so that what happened to me never happens to anybody else."
A judge recently gave the go-ahead for the suit to go to trial.
Garcia — the father of a then-2-year-old boy — was watching TV alone in his third-floor apartment on June 29, 2007 when someone knocked at the door.
He saw a woman through the peephole who asked for Garcia's brother. Garcia cracked the door open to give her the vacationing sibling's phone number, and f
our men kicked the door open and threw Garcia to the ground.
"They put a gun to my head," he said. "They grabbed my hands and put them behind my back."
The brutes grabbed an iron and held the searing metal to Garcia's hands, demanding money.
Another grabbed a kitchen knife and held it to the back of Garcia's neck so he wouldn't scream as they pressed the iron over his back, buttocks and arm.
Garcia told them he had the $6,000 rent money for the bodega that he manages. But the bandits wanted more, and tortured him for more than an hour.
"I feared that I was never going to see (my son) again," he said.
Garcia was treated for third-degree burns at Jacobi Medical Center. Cops have not caught his attackers.
Sources said they believe the group may have expected Garcia to have the bodega's money in the apartment, and may have been watching him and noticed the three unlocked doors that led into his building.
Garcia's lawyer, Andrew Laskin, said the lack of security in the building was outrageous. He
obtained an NYPD report that showed 191 violent crimes had been committed in the vicinity of Garcia's home in the prior year.
"I mean, how unreasonable is it that in the South Bronx a landlord who collects rent should have doors that lock?" said Laskin.
Lew Bodak or representatives from his real estate companies — Genue Estates, Inc. and Role Realty Management Corp. — could not be reached for comment.
