A Big Apple deli worker who was shot and killed while at work feared falling prey last year to the rampant violence plaguing small businesses.

But Abdul Saleh, 28, still became the latest victim of that bloodshed over the weekend, when he was gunned down during a late-night scuffle with a problem patron outside his family-run Alphabet City store.

His tragic death came nearly a year after he gave WABC-TV News an interview for a report about “panic buttons” for bodega workers to help protect them from armed and dangerous street thugs.

“People get shot, killed,” Saleh told the local station in May 2025. “Sometimes you get robbed and the police never respond quick, come three or four hours late.”

“To be honest, he didn’t want to be here no more. He didn’t feel safe,” said Saleh’s heartbroken cousin, Basam Hussain, outside a makeshift memorial near Sal’s Deli and Grocery, at East 13th Street and Avenue B, where dozens of mourners came to pay their respects Monday afternoon.

“Last year, he was talking about his safety,” Hussain, 31, told The Post. “They’d call the cops, and they would never answer. They’d come three or four hours later. He was talking about this. Same story.”

Saleh’s interview with WABC was part of a story about the United Bodega Association business group announced a $1.6 million program to install panic buttons at 500 city stores amid a spate of violent crimes at delis and bodegas, including a series of fatal incidents in The Bronx earlier that year.

The buttons would bypass the traditional 911 system and alert NYPD central command directly.

But Saleh’s deli did not have a panic button, said Kim Gallagher, owner of nearby Unleashed Spa, who was among several locals paying their respects outside the store. 

“He was wonderful. He really was. I know people say that about people who die but he really was. He was always smiling,” Gallagher said.

Saleh had just returned from a trip to Yemen — where he met his 2-year-old son for the first time — on Friday, his cousin said.

He was working at the deli the following night when a known neighborhood menace — who had previously stolen from the store and harassed workers there — came in, Hussain said.

Police said an argument broke out, spilling out onto the sidewalk at around 11:30 p.m. when gunshots rang out. 

Saleh was shot in the torso. He was taken to Bellevue Hospital by EMS workers, but could not be saved.

Law enforcement sources told The Post that the alleged 28-year-old gunman, Kavone Horton, was wounded when one of the bullets ricocheted and struck him.

He was taken to a hospital with non-fatal injuries.

Horton was charged with murder, manslaughter and weapons possession.

Hussain, who owns a bodega in East New York, Brooklyn, said workers at the deli had filed four police reports about the shooter — and even gotten him banned at one point for about a year.

“He’d want stuff for free,” he said. “Take, grab, and go, and always try to fight with them.”

The NYPD didn’t immediately comment.

Saleh had been in the US for about 15 years, with his wife and their two children, including a 3-year-old daughter, back in Yemen.

“He was super happy. He was about to bring them to this country. He was about to apply… He had an interview in a couple of months and then he just died,” Hussain said.

He said Saleh’s brother held him as he was dying. 

“Before he died, he said, ‘Just take care of my kids.’ That’s what he tell him.”