A Brooklyn bodega worker is speaking out about a fatal confrontation last week with a belligerent customer, saying that he and a fellow clerk were defending themselves when they delivered the blows that may have ended the man’s life.
Kelvin Melo, 48, told The News Thursday that 59-year-old Gerry Hill, stormed into the Royal Deli & Grill on Knickerbocker Ave. near Jefferson St. in Bushwick Monday looking for trouble.
“I thought it was going to be an ordinary day,“ Melo said. “The guy would come in looking for a fight and he would leave. I didn’t expect anybody to die.“
Melo said he had only been working at the deli a month when he found himself wresting on the floor with a troublemaking customer.
“I was making sandwiches, but I couldn’t hear the orders because he was screaming,” Melo said. “I went around the counter and told him to leave. He said, ‘I want to fight you. I’m going to f—ing kill you. Any one of you come outside and fight.’”
Melo said he grabbed a cup of hot coffee, ready to chuck it at Hill if necessary, but put the cup down because he didn’t think Hill would go through with it, he said.
“Suddenly, he walked up and punched me in the face. I grabbed him and he fell on top of me and we were fighting,” Melo said. “When I got up, I saw all the blood and thought I was bleeding. I went to the bathroom to clean up and I realized it was his blood.”
He added, “I didn’t see (fellow clerk Mukel) Shaibi hit him because he was on top of me and we were fighting. After the fight Shaibi showed me the stick he was hitting him with. It was broken. It was a stick we used to break ice with.”
Police brought Melo and Shaibi in for questioning, but they were released without charges. A spokesman for Brooklyn D.A. Eric Gonzalez said the case remained under investigation as the United Bodega Association presses the case that the workers were acting in self defense.
Police sources said Hill, who had 26 past arrests, was the likely aggressor in the clash. After the confrontation, Hill returned to his apartment around the corner, where neighbors found him sitting on the steps, bleeding from his head.
His brother Christopher Hill showed up a few minutes before the victim passed. He told him brother he’d been “jumped” by the workers, the sibling said.
Medics rushed the injured Hill to Elmhurst Hospital, where he died, cops said. Police are awaiting an autopsy report on the cause of death.
After the fight, Melo said he got back to work, and the cops showed up soon after to take him around the area looking for Hill. The officers then dropped him back at the deli.
“About an hour later, the cops came back and said, ‘We have bad news. The guy died. You have to come to the station.” said Melo.
Melo, who’s lived in New York for 26 years and supports his mother in the Dominican Republic, has worked at the deli for just over a month, he said. He said he wanted to speak with the press because he was concerned the officers who interviewed him didn’t take notes or record him.
“There was no thinking about this guy dying,” said Fernando Mateo, spokesman for the United Bodega Association, at a press conference Thursday. ” No one thought that he was hit hard enough for him to die. So we’re waiting for the autopsy to see what really happened.”
“In the meantime, we are asking our district attorney Eric Gonzalez to release the tapes. He’s got tapes there that he can go back 90 days and corroborate everything that Mr. Melo has said here today.”
Mateo said his heart goes out to Hill’s family, but said Hill was a problem for several businesses in the neighborhood.
“We are tired of getting beat up. We are tired of getting robbed. We are tired of getting looted. We are tired of being assaulted, stabbed, shot at at some point or another,” he said. “We have the right to defend ourselves, but our intentions are never to take the life of another person.”
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