A family birthday celebration gave way to funeral plans for the devastated kin of a man stabbed to death in a fast-escalating dispute over an order of shrimp inside a Harlem seafood market.
Victim Malik Burrell, on the eve of his 25th birthday, was killed in the Tuesday night fight where he and brother Bobby battled with three workers inside the Express Fish Market after they were accused of refusing to pay for their seafood order, police said.
“I had my whole family, granddaughters, everybody sitting there waiting for them to come back from the store with the shrimp,” their father Robert Burrell told the Daily News. “And they never made it back.”
The brothers intended to bring the food to their grandmother’s nearby residence for a family celebration of Malik’s birth. They were instead gathered Wednesday outside the store on St. Nicholas Place near W. 155th St., where the doors were shuttered.
“I know damn well my sons ain’t stealing nothing,” said Robert Burrell, standing on a sidewalk stained with Malik’s blood. “They have no reason to steal, they have money … My son came up here to chill with his brother and enjoy his birthday, that’s it.”
According to police sources, there was an initial fist fight between older brother Bobby and a store worker before the 29-year-old returned with his kid brother to spark another round of brawling around 9:45 p.m. Tuesday.
The employee alleges Bobby walked out of the store without without paying for his food as the quarrel over the order escalated, police sources said.
Surveillance video obtained by police shows a store worker with a large knife stabbing both men in the abdomen as fellow employees pushed them out the front door, according to the sources.
“This happened over a bag of shrimp and a lobster,” said customer Pedro Laza, 60, who witnessed the melee. “The boy was going to give up … but the first thing the worker was thinking about was he was stealing.”
A high-ranking NYPD official said the video will help determine what charges may be brought.
“If he’s fighting them off with a knife, that’s one thing,” the official said of the worker. “If he’s charging at them with the knife, that’s something else.”
The knife-wielding worker was taken into custody after fleeing and then returning to the scene, police said. The weapon was recovered at the store, with charges pending against the suspect after he was brought to the 30th Precinct stationhouse for questioning.
“He wasn’t defending himself,” Robert Burrell said of his son’s killer. “[My sons] had no weapons. They came at my son with weapons … My son was a beautiful kid, very well mannered.”
Both brothers were rushed to Harlem Hospital, where Malik died.
“Over shrimps?” said Zaimar Eusebio, mother of Bobby’s 12-year-old daughter, who witnessed the aftermath of the clash. “They were both stabbed. Malik was still alive. I kept telling him, ‘Keep your eyes open.’”
The brothers have no arrest history in New York City, police said.
“This is crazy madness,” added a family friend who gave her name as Nikki. “Someone lost their life over food … I grew up with them, we close knit … It hurts.”
The case was reminiscent of last year’s deadly encounter between a Harlem bodega worker initially charged with murder for stabbing a man who came after him behind the counter of the Blue Moon bodega.
The charges against Jose Alba, 61, were eventually dropped amidst a public outcry with Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg ultimately concluding the worker acted in self-defense.
But Alba spent five days jailed on Rikers Island following the lethal encounter with Austin Simon, who became enraged when the store worker grabbed a bag of chips from his girlfriend’s 10-year-old daughter after the mom couldn’t pay for the snack with her benefits card.
A video obtained by The News shows Simon, 35, getting in Alba’s face and shoving the clerk into a chair behind the counter, with the worker sent careening into a wall of merchandise.
Alba grabbed a nearby knife and stabbed Simon six times, piercing his heart, lung and jugular vein in his neck, while the girlfriend stabbed the store worker in the arm during the melee.