A customer at a Brooklyn deli flew into a rage over an order of cold cuts and punched and tried to stab an employee — before opening fire in the store over the weekend, cops and the worker said Thursday.
The suspect walked into Aden Deli and Grill on Rockaway Parkway near Smiths Lane in Canarsie minutes before 10 a.m. Saturday and argued with the 41-year-old worker over wait times for food, cops said.
“There was some kind of wait ahead of him, so he stepped outside and went to smoke a cigarette or something,” deli worker Efrain Roman told The Post.
“When he stepped outside, my coworker thought he left and told me to cancel his order,” Roman said. “So, when he came back after a few minutes he thought it could be done. And I told him I wasn’t ready, that we thought you left so I told him, I got ’em right now.
“And he started mouthing off, and I don’t do well with mouthing off, so I mouthed off back a bit,” he said. “We started arguing and I told him, ‘You know what? You’re not going to get nothing. Get the heck out.'”
The irate customer then sucker-punched the worker and tried to stab him with a knife before leaving the store, police and Roman said.
Roman said he chased the thug into the parking lot, where the man pulled a knife — so the worker grabbed a chef’s knife from the deli and the customer ran off.
The suspect attacked the worker during a fight over wait times for food, police said. NYPDA short time later, the man returned with a gun and fired two rounds into the store, cops said. No one was struck.
“There was a car there, some Mercedes or something,” Roman said. “He jumped in the car and then grabbed the gun and came back to the store and opened the door and shot twice.”
The suspect then took off in a black Mercedes Benz SUV, heading north on East 96th Street, cops said.
Roman refused medical attention at the scene, police said.
“The only damage is one of the ceiling tiles got two holes,” he said. “That’s the only damage. Nothing else is damaged in the store.
“I’ve seen him once in a while,” he said of the crazed gunman. “He’s not a regular, regular, like you know, a daily customer, but I’ve seen him maybe about once every two weeks or so. He pops up in the store, buys a couple [of] things.”
The suspect fired two rounds into the store, but no one was hit. NYPDPolice released surveillance video and photos of the suspect early Thursday.
The bald man, with a dark complexion, is believed to be between 50 and 60 years old.
He is shown wearing a white T-shirt with the words, “G-Star Originals,” as well as blue jeans and brown shoes.
“This is something that’s common with me in this job because I work in the hood most of the time and I’m a bigger guy,” Roman conceded.
“I’m not the average deli man,” he said. “I’m not submissive. I’m very aggressive and you know I’m very combative. So if you come at me with an attitude I’m gonna throw you out or I’m gonna pick you up and throw you out physically.”
The incident at the Aden Deli and Grill is one of several recent violent incidents that have taken place at delis in the Big Apple. Google MapsThe incident comes as similar violent acts have recently erupted in and near delis, bodegas, smoke shops and other small businesses in the Big Apple.
Hard-working Coney Island deli owner Jamal Sawaid was bashed with a metal pipe by four assailants who called him a racial slur, also on Saturday, police said.
Nelson Ortiz, 24, the owner of a nearby smoke shop, was shot dead at close range as he left the Midway Deli and Grill in Canarsie, where he bought a sandwich, in broad daylight on Monday, cops said.
A 32-year-old man was left in critical condition when a rival stabbed him outside a bodega on Boynton Avenue near Westchester Avenue in the Soundview section of the Bronx around 5 p.m. Sunday, authorities said.
Chala Jamison, 23, was arrested Monday for allegedly stabbing an Upper East Side juice bar worker, leaving him in critical condition – following an argument that erupted when she didn’t pay for her beverage last week, authorities said.
