A Queens store clerk stabbed a man to death early Tuesday during an argument sparked by a beer in what the union who backs bodega employees believes was self-defense.
The fatal confrontation sparked off about 12:35 a.m. at the Mini Mart on Queens Blvd near 64th Road in Rego Park. The clash was over beer, police sources said.
Cops said the 21-year-old victim was stabbed by the clerk, who was identified by the United Bodegas of America union as a 21-year-old man. Charges against him were pending Tuesday evening.
The stabber ran from the scene as the victim bled to death, police said.
Irene Martinez-Schober, 40, was walking by with her brother and saw the victim clinging to a pole before he collapsed.
“My brother was the one who first said, ‘We’ve got a situation here, call 911,’ ” Martinez-Schober said. “He sees him still standing holding onto the pole. We’re coming out, my other brother’s calling 911 and I see him there still sitting up. So I went over to him to touch his wound to see if he’s still bleeding so I can apply pressure to slow it.”
“He stood, he kind of stumbled to the side when he saw us coming,” she added. “He stumbled to the side. Then he was sitting on the floor and he put his hand out. It was bloody. He couldn’t even speak. When I put my hand on his belly to see if I can apply pressure and there was no blood coming out. He had already lost so much blood. He already bled out. It was all in his pants.”
She said the knife wound was about 2 inches long.
“He still had a pulse,” she said. “I’m telling the cops, ‘He still has a pulse, send an EMT.’ His eyes were open. He did begin to foam as the cops were coming. I saw everything. I saw his heart. Just thinking about it, I’m nauseous. I felt like crying. I tried not cry. I cried a little bit last night. I was just nauseous. I wish I came out here sooner.”
The victim was taken to Elmhurst Hospital Center, but he could not be saved. Cops were working to identify him.
Video taken at the scene by a witness shows worried paramedics pumping the shirtless victim’s chest as he is placed in an ambulance. A bandage covers the upper right side of his chest.
“We are sorry a life was lost during what we believe was a robbery of a beer,” United Bodegas of America President Radahmes Rodriguez said in a statement.
The clerk “is a good kid with no criminal record and working very hard like most bodega clerks defending his business from looters. It could have been my son who is 21 and works as a clerk in my bodega.”
Martinez-Schober, 40, lived in the neighborhood for 30 years before moving out of state recently. She was visiting relatives.
“It was never anything like this,” she said. ““Do you have to stab someone over a beer, though? It’s petty.”
A neighbor saw the victim in front of the building where she lives.
“He made it all the way here and grabbed onto the pole because you can see his fingerprints and then just collapsed,” she said. “I could literally see the cop’s face change. They saw him, they ran over to him. You saw the frantic movements of everyone. It was frantic. They took him in the ambulance and the EMT was doing chest compressions on him. He was completely bloody head to toe.”
She said the bodega had a bad reputation.
“It is very shady,” she said. “Drunk people. People on drugs. They’re in and out of that particular bodega. That one for some reason is just really sketchy.”
Hours after the stabbing a trail of blood still lined the sidewalk leading from the bodega at 64th Road to an apartment building at the end of the block near 65th Road. The bodega was taped off.
Fernando Mateo, a spokesman for the United Bodegas of America advocacy group, said the incident was tragic.
“We ask the public and the media not to jump to conclusions until NYPD detectives have pieced the puzzle,” Mateo said in a statement. “We are hoping NYPD videotapes will tell the real story of what happened.”
