NEW YORK – A father who fed snacks to his young daughter at his neighborhood bodega in Manhattan was killed during an argument with a gunman, police said. This while the workers rushed to protect the man’s daughter a few meters from the scene of the tragedy.
The fatal crash occurred shortly after 4 p.m. Thursday at 144 Deli Grocery at Nagle Ave in Inwood, according to police.
Surveillance video showed a man in a green North Face jacket standing in front of the shop door shouting and reaching for something with his right hand. Moments later, the footage shows who she was yelling at: Tykeem Berry, 30, seen wearing a puffy red jacket as she set her headphones down on the counter.
The clerks behind the register appeared to be telling Berry to stay inside the store, when suddenly the other man burst into the warehouse and pulled out a gun. Berry wrestled with him, the video showed, before police said he had been shot in the chest at point-blank range.
Another surveillance camera captured the suspected shooter running across the street as he fled the scene. The owner of the winery noticed people crowding around the victim during his last moments.
“He called for help, he held out his hand, and then everyone grabbed him and came to help him,” owner Ahmad El-Myndcer said.
Someone who was there before the police arrived as a witness said Berry lost consciousness. The victim was pronounced dead at Harlem Hospital, police said.
What the cameras did not catch were the store’s employees and customers protecting the victim’s daughter, who was inside the store at the time of the bloodshed. El-Myndcer said the girl is between 8 and 10 years old.
“I don’t want the children to see their father. They killed him, she will affect them in the future, she will have a problem, a problem,” El-Myndcer said. “We keep her inside her, we give her sodas, we give her what she wants.”
The shop owner told our sister chain Nbc New York that the victim had been a loyal customer for 15 years. Every morning she stopped by the store to order a sandwich for her daughter before driving her to school.
The police questioned the witnesses, who were many, as there were people inside and outside the warehouse. What sparked the argument between the two men wasn’t immediately clear.
The suspect has been on the run since Thursday evening and no arrests have yet been made.
Anyone with information should call the NYPD Crime Stoppers Hotline at 1-800-577-TIPS (8477) or, for Spanish, 1-888-57-PISTA (74782). The public can also submit their own tips by logging into the Crime Stoppers website.
