Even a bum leg won’t stop him from early vote HE’S GOT A GUN
Man threatens workers at Bronx supermarket
A suspected shoplifter ejected from a Bronx supermarket returned with what appears to be a rifle or shotgun, sending customers running for cover, shocking video obtained by the Daily News shows.
“That guy’s back,” an employee quietly told Argenis de Jesus, the manager of the Associated Supermarket on E. 167th St. in Morrisania “And he’s got a gun.”
When the gunman saw de Jesus, who minutes earlier told him to get lost, he pulled the firearm from a transparent plastic bag and pointed it at him.
“You wanna talk s—- now?” the gunman said.
Video shows de Jesus and the gunman on opposite sides of a counter, with de Jesus trying to dodge him, then running for cover.
“I jetted to the back of the store,” recalled de Jesus, 30. “I told the customers, the cashiers, to follow me.”
More than 20 people, plus de Jesus, locked themselves in a room with a garbage compactor and ice machine.
Others took cover by a customer service area where lottery tickets are sold.
The gunman, believed to be in his 40s, took off without firing a shot.
Two workers followed him, de Jesus said, but from a distance. Police were called and the workers indicated the nearby home they
thought he ran into — but he wasn’t there and is still being sought.
“I had stomach pains the whole day,” said de Jesus, whose parents own the store. “I couldn’t even talk to the police officers. My hands were shaking.”
De Jesus said that when he got to the store at about 2 p.m. workers told him the determined shoplifter had been there four times already, each time picking up a cooked chicken, walking around with it and complaining about the $8.99 price.
Each time workers asked him to leave because they suspected he might try to steal the food.
When he returned a fifth time, at about 3 p.m., de Jesus told him to get lost.
“Don’t come back,” de Jesus says he told him. “You’re going to have problems.”
That didn’t go over well. “He said, ‘Yo, I got gun,” de Jesus recalled. “I was like, ‘ Yeah, yeah,’ because we hear that all the time. But 15, 20 minutes later he came back. He was definitely looking for me.”
His sister, Nallely de Jesus, who is also a manager but was not at the store that day, is worried about retaliation.
“I’m panicked,” she said. “Guns are everywhere.”
Earlier Wednesday she was at Food Universe, another supermarket owned by the family, explaining the store’s exchange policy to an angry customer.
“I got guns,” she says the customer told her. “I’m gonna come back and shoot you.”
She did not report the incident to police.