Luis Morocho never suspected that what seemed like a normal day at the juice shop where he works would end in an episode that almost cost him his life.
“He is in serious condition right now. Now we brought him here so they can help us, so they can see what happened to him, but he can’t really do much, he can’t move that much. Because of everything, it depends on you so that they do everything with you,” said Segundo Moroho, Luis’s brother.
Police reported the arrest of 23-year-old Chala Jamison, who faces charges of attempted murder and robbery. On April 12, he asked Luis for a $12 juice at Juice Island, located at 1025 Third Avenue, but ended up attacking him with a knife.
“She was looking through the window for about five minutes, that’s what I saw on the video, and there was no one in the store, she goes in, takes a knife and attacks Luis while he was in the back of the car. warehouse, stabbed him and left,” explained Sam Alherish, one of the owners of the business.
According to Alherish, his employee Luis, of Ecuadorian origin and 39 years old, was attending to the woman, but she could not pay him for the juice. Luis told her that she should take the product for free because she had to attend to other clients, but the woman was annoyed, demanding the payment receipt.
Luis proceeded to call the police when he saw that he was not leaving the business and at that point she began throwing things on the ground angrily telling him that she would return to stab him.
Various angles of the business’s surveillance cameras show how he returns around 8:30 pm, with the hood of his sweater up, takes a knife from the counter and attacks Luis, who had his back turned.
Luis was taken to the hospital that night, he received 18 stitches in his head and neck and has no feeling in his thumb or index finger on his right hand.
On Wednesday, his brother and also a leader of the Bodegueros Unidos de America association requested greater protection from the union.
“He was seriously ill, simply because of a juice that she did not want to pay for. We need that when there is a threat against an individual, the police can act and arrest that person,” said Fernando Mateo, spokesman for Bodegueros Unidos de América.
The business owner also said that Luis had been working with him for 20 years and had never experienced a situation of this nature. Even now, he feels fear in what for him had been one of the safest neighborhoods in New York. Today he closes the ‘Juice Island’ early.
