BODEGAS IN CRISIS
Crime-besieged owners want panic buttons, stun guns, pistols and ploice help
City bodega owners are demanding weapons training from the NYPD, panic buttons and quicker response times after one of them struggled to fend off a mob of violent teens with a pipe in The Bronx last month.
“I had to keep them back with the pipe and use my hands when they rushed me,” 2056 Deli Grocery owner Edward Lara said Sunday of the terrifying Oct. 29 incident in his Highbridge bodega, which was overrun by gangbangers who were hunting another teen.
“I thought they were going to kill me,” Lara said.
Security-camera footage of the incident was reminiscent of the caught-on-camera killing of innocent teen Lesandro “Junior” Guzman-Feliz at the hands of a dozen Trinitarios gang members at another Bronx boedga over the summer.
The targeted teen in Lara’s bodega was luckier: He escaped death when the owner and his employees stepped in at their own peril to save him.
“They had him down and kicking him. More and more kids came in,’’ Lara said of the youth and his attackers. “I have four workers, and they helped me. We pulled them off and threw them out.
“I closed the door, but they started hitting the glass. I went outside and pushed them back. One showed me a gun and a few had knives. I was afraid.”
Lara and the United Bodegas of America, which says it has roughly 100 members, are now calling on cops to install panic buttons inside city delis, train workers on how to use stun guns and allow qualified workers to obtain pistol permits for use on premises.
“People from the community run to us for help,” said the group’s president, Radhames Rodriguez, 55, during a rally held outside Lara’s bodega Sunday. “They run into our stores begging for help. We are putting our lives in danger, too. We need the tools to defend them and ourselves.”
Lara says he tried in 1992 to obtain a pistol permit but was told he could only use the gun for two hours a day — going to and from the bank.
“Make it easier for the people who qualify to get a gun,” Lara urged the NYPD.
The NYPD did not return a request for comment.