‘HAZMAT’ SLAYER’S RAMPAGE

Killer in protective suit suspected in other robberies

A hazmat-suit-wearing gunman shot dead a deli worker on the Upper East Side late Friday night, and may be responsible for three other robberies in the past 10 days, law-enforcement sources said.

About 30 minutes after the late-Friday slaying at Daona Gourmet Deli on East 81st Street, authorities believe the killer held a worker at a Bronx bodega at gunpoint and swiped $1,000 worth of cash and goods.

But the suited killer’s reign of terror apparently dates back to Feb. 25, the sources said, when the man robbed a Brooklyn business at gunpoint.

He struck again March 1, at a business in Greenpoint, a source said.

“We must put an end to these brutal assaults on our bodega owners,” said Radhames Rodriguez, head of Unitd Bodegas of America, which has offered a $5,000 reward for einformation leading to the killer’s arrest and conviction. “These criminals must be taken off our streets and punished.”

A dozen bodega workers turned out at a Saturday news conference outside the deli, demanding change.

“You can imagine what the small bodega owners in The Bronx, in Queens and Brooklyn and in northern Manhattan are going through,” said UBA spokesman Fernando Mateo.

The hazmat-suited killer walked into the Daona deli at East 81st Street and Third Avenue at around 11:30 p.m. Friday and pointed a gun at a customer’s head, ordering him to get on the floor and empty his pockets, according to the source.

The brazen killer turned his attention to the worker behind the counter, hitting him in the head with the butt of the gun and walking toward the back of the store, giving the customer a chance to flee, the source added.

The gunman blasted the clerk, 67, in the head, killing him before

walking out and fleeing on a moped, according to the source.

A man who walked into the store afterward saw the clerk lying on the ground bleeding and called 911. The victim was pronounced dead at the scene.

The killer then made his way to 851 Melrose Ave. in The Bronx with a gun, pointed it at the worker behind the counter and robbed the place, the NYPD said.

He threatened to return and kill the workers if anyone called the police, the frightened employees told The Post.

“It appears it’s the same person,” an NYPD spokesperson said.

The worker held at gunpoint claims there was a second suspect in a hazmat suit acting as a lookout, owner Muaeen Qasem, 30, told The Post.

“Somebody was outside waiting for him . . . One came in the store and one was waiting for him outside,” Qasem recalled.

The gunman remained at large Saturday, police said. The NYPD could not confirm if there was a second suspect in a hazmat suit.

SPREE: The body of a deli clerk is carted off early Saturday after a man wearing a hazmat suit shot him dead at Daona (left). Muaeen Qasem (right), whose deli was robbed shortly after, says a second suited man was a lookout.