UPPER WEST SIDE — A roommate of Chelsea club operator Savyon Zabar described Monday how frantic efforts to save his friend's life failed after he found Zabar strangled in his room.
Zabar, 54, who went by the name “Big Ben,” was discovered in his bedroom at the West 81st Street apartment, near Columbus Avenue, about 10:30 a.m. Wednesday, police said.
“I found him facing up, mouth open, eyes rolled back,” Zabar’s shattered roommate Antonio Baez, 26, told DNAinfo New York.
“He was dressed in his underwear and a shirt. I tried to give him mouth-to-mouth and tried to bring him down to the floor and give him CPR. He didn’t respond at all.”
Zabar died at the scene, officials said.
Zabar, a key player in the city’s gay club scene who managed XL and New Escuelita and was a pioneer of the Vogue dancing movement, had been hanging out in his room with a friend for about two hours when Baez heard the guest storm out, he said.
“He slammed the doors. It was so weird,” he said. “Nobody ever slammed the door that hard. We felt concerned and tried to knock on Ben’s door. He never opened."
Baez, who knew the code to a keypad that locked Zabar's door, let himself in and found his body.
Baez, who met Zabar at New Escuelita when he was a teen, said he’d seen the friend who stormed out a few times in the past.
“He used to give massages to Ben,” Baez said. “It was somebody he used to date on the low.”
Baez said was he was quizzed by detectives for hours on Friday and told them all he knew.
“They wanted to know if I knew [the friend], if I knew about him, about their friendship,” he said.
“They were just trying to figure out who was this guy, what he looked like, what he was wearing, what was he doing.”
No arrests had been made by Monday, but police are searching for the man who fled abruptly and believe he may live in The Bronx, law-enforcement sources said.
Meanwhile, Zabar’s parents are flying in from Israel this week.
“They’re devastated. It’s so hard because they don’t speak English,” Baez said. “They’re going bananas.”
