After Brigadier Juan Suero went by order of the Superior Civil Governor and Captain General of the province of Santo Domingo, Field Marshal Carlos de Vargas, to relieve Lieutenant General Pedro Santana of the command of El Seibo, and before the refusal of the latter would end up leaving said town and in San Antonio de Guerra would take the position of head of the brigade of the homonymous town on March 14; upon arriving he had news that one of the largest groups of insurgents wandered around those surroundings and planned to go out in search of them.

Among his provisions was the idea of working in combination with the Spanish forces of the Poma Rosa camp but on the same day that he conceived his project he received reinforcement from the third provisional battalion that had just arrived from peninsular Spain and that came with all of its soldiers.

After a steep slope, there was a slippery descent, at the end of which there was a gorge, on the opposite bank of which were the Dominican rebels at a point called Paso del Muerto, which was a difficult defile surrounded by dense forest, and to which a narrow and bad road led.

As the companies retreated, Brigadier Suero approached a group of officers, lit a cigarette, and when he was most content, expressing his satisfaction with the behavior of his brave soldiers, a bullet came and went through him, leaving him mortally wounded.

His Majesty had only recently recognised him as an army brigadier, and he was very flattered and grateful for this.In the American newspaper The New York Times, the news of his death was headlined as "A Negro General in Spanish Service Mortally Wounded," etc.