By MARK BULLIET and CHRIS MICHAUD

May 29, 2005 -- A dispute between two cigarette sellers led to a slap and a Macing, then escalated to a stabbing that left one of the vendors, a father of a newborn, dead.
Cops charged a Bronx man, Njasang Nji, 26, early yesterday with the murder of Luis Padilla, 20, also of The Bronx.

Padilla's family said both men sold bootleg cigarettes at 125th Street and St. Nicholas Avenue in Harlem, but on Friday their competition led to Nji smacking Padilla's common-law wife, with whom Padilla has a month-old son.

Padilla went after Nji but ended up getting sprayed with Mace and had to be treated at a hospital early in the evening, his brother, Andrew Martinez, told The Post.

Later, Padilla went to confront Nji again.

"I wanted to go together," Martinez said, "but he went and did it his way."

Padilla's wife, Mary Smith, 19, said she had warned him: "Be careful, just be careful. And call me when you get back."

But he never did.

Witnesses said Padilla was waiting on the street outside the Aristy Food Market on Kingsbridge Avenue in The Bronx when Nji, who lives on nearby West Kingsbridge Road, got out of a cab.

"I heard them cursing at each other," said a man who goes by the name Chino and was watching from his apartment window. "They were really going at it," cursing at each other, then Padilla "ran down the hill and the other dude chased him . . . he just started stabbing him."

Cops said Padilla, who had 14 arrests, was stabbed twice in the left arm and chest and was pronounced dead on arrival at St. Barnabas Hospital.

Additional reporting by Philip Messing
http://www.nypost.com/