NOOSE FuRY
A FAMED West Village butcher is the subject of a hate crime investigation after he was accused of serving up a noose to a black deliveryman, police sources said Thursday.
Joe Ottomanelli, of Ottomanelli & Sons Meat Market on Bleecker St., gave Victor Sheppard a noose fashioned out of yellow rope and an odd message, sources said.
“If you ever have any stress, just put it around your neck and pull it. I could even help you with it,” Sheppard, 36, said Ottomanelli told him.
Sheppard said he froze after Ottomanelli presented the noose as a “gift” on Tuesday morning.
“I started shaking,” he told the Daily News. “He was laughing. I don’t know what kind of joke that is.”
The deliveryman made a beeline to the 6th Precinct stationhouse, where he filed a report and handed over the noose, sources told The News.
The Hate Crimes Task Force has launched an investigation into the incident.
Reached Thursday at his popular meat mecca, Ottomanelli insisted he has no beef with Sheppard.
“We were just fooling around,” Ottomanelli, 58, told The News.
Ottomanelli said he never thought that what he considered a joke would be taken as a racial attack.
“We work with black people,” Ottomanelli said. “There’s other black drivers that come here. No, never . . . . We weren’t raised that way.”
Ottomanelli said he wanted to apologize to Sheppard and give him a hug — but the deliveryman sounded in no mood to forgive.
“Mentally and emotionally, he’s really hurt me. I felt very endangered, just doing my job,” Sheppard said.
“This is a man who’s 58-plus. He really thinks handing a noose to a black man is sending a playful message?”
Sheppard has been delivering meat to the century-old butcher for the past eight months.
He said Ottomanelli has made racially insensitive comments in the past — but the deliveryman just brushed them off.
“He once said, ‘Did you know that just a few years ago, black people couldn’t ride in the front of the bus?’ ” Sheppard said.
The Rev. Kevin McCall, the national crisis director of Al Sharpton’s National Action Network, called for a boycott of the beloved butcher shop.
“In 2017, you would never think someone would hand someone a noose,” McCall said.
Ottomanelli worker Paul Durando said Sheppard didn’t seem offended when he left the store that day.
“I can’t understand it. He walked out of here hysterically laughing,” Durando said. “We love this guy.”
In a statement Thursday night, Ottomanelli & Sons said: “This is an unfortunate circumstance that we are working to resolve immediately. We are a family-owned business with over 50 years of service in the Village, and have the utmost respect for all of our employees and patrons.”
Sheppard, for his part, vowed to never return to Ottomanelli’s shop.
“I will never again,” he said. deliver there