Two suspects burst right into a busy barbershop on Roosevelt Avenue and opened hearth Friday night — prompting neighborhood leaders to name for continued police motion on the crime-infested Corona block.
The gang-related taking pictures rang out contained in the Langumas El Cache Barbershop in Queens at round 5:45 p.m., surveillance footage confirmed.
The video captured them working into the barbershop earlier than a heroic barber intervened, holding again a suspect in a white hoodie, whereas his confederate ran to the again of the shop and fired off just a few rounds at an unknown sufferer.
The barber, Rafael Abreu, 47, was praised by neighborhood leaders Hiram Monserrate, a former native pol, and Ramon Ramirez-Baez of the Let’s Enhance Roosevelt Avenue coalition, for disarming the gunman in a press convention from the barbershop Monday.
The bullet gap left by the gunman may nonetheless be seen in the back of the barbershop wall, leaving about an inch gap within the black tile.
“What we noticed right here was a show of gang exercise, and all of them had been armed with weapons. This barber proper right here, Mr. Rafael Abreu, is a hero,” Monserrate mentioned.
Monserrate even informed the barbershop to rename itself the “Barber Store of Heroes on Roosevelt Avenue” and formally known as upon Mayor Eric Adams to offer Abreu a key to town.
Each Monserrate and Ramirez-Baez efficiently satisfied Gov. Kathy Hochul to deploy New York State troopers in October to help the NYPD with taking management of the sleazy stretch — an space nicknamed the “Market of Sweethearts.”
“We’re coping with armed, harmful parts, gangs and cartels. That’s what we’re confronting on Roosevelt Avenue. That’s what we have now in Queens. There’s no place as harmful as Roosevelt Avenue, so we want the initiative to remain right here for 90 days and past till our neighborhood has peace and security.” Monserrate mentioned, advocating for the state troopers to stay.
The taking pictures was deemed gang-related and the barbers had been defending a person who sought cowl of their retailer, native officers mentioned.
Abreu, who doesn’t communicate English, informed his account of the taking pictures via a translator on the press convention.
“It was very emotional to me that I protected two folks’s lives and that I defended my coworkers, who’re my brothers,” he mentioned.
Abreu described feeling “unsafe” on the barbershop for the previous 6 years.
Neighborhood activists have decried Roosevelt Avenue as a hall that had turn out to be an “city crime zone” and residential to “extra brothels than bodegas.”
The Submit has uncovered the explosion of brothels and shoplifting alongside Roosevelt Avenue — a fundamental thoroughfare that runs via Jackson Heights, Corona, Elmhurst and Woodside.
Brothels had been noticed throughout the road from two public colleges whereas unlawful migrant open-air markets — the place the whole lot from ladies to stolen items are offered — have plagued the world.
“I’ve seven children. I’m a father of seven youngsters. I don’t need to be a sufferer of all this crime … I used to be considering by no means coming again to work,” Abreu mentioned
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