The hazmat suit-wearing gunman who killed a popular Manhattan deli worker during a robbery was nabbed by NYPD cops Thursday, according to two police sources.
The suspect, wanted for killing a grocery store clerk and ripping off at least three other stores, was caught in the Bronx and is being questioned at the 42nd Precinct stationhouse, the sources said.
The break in the case came Tuesday night when his white hazmat suit was found behind a building on Park Ave. near E. 158th St. in Concourse Village.
Police tracked the suspect on video after he killed Daona Gourmet Deli worker Sueng Choi, 67, while pistol-whipping him during a botched robbery on the Upper East Side on Friday then rode off on his scooter.
The killer, who got only a tray of lighters after the murder, had struck twice earlier in Brooklyn.
On March 1, he robbed the Super Deli Market on Manhattan Ave. in Greenpoint. The gunman “calmly” demanded all the money in the register and five cartons of cigarettes, the targeted worker there told the Daily News.
A similar robbery took place the night of Feb. 25 at the Sunset Bagel Shop in Ditmas Park. The crook placed a food order, announced a robbery, then fled with cash and several cellphones, police said.
The building the hazmat suit was found behind is a five-minute walk from the Ya Ya Deli on Melrose Ave. and E. 160th St. The crook robbed that store 22 minutes after killing Choi, arriving and leaving on the same scooter, according to cops.
Customers worried about Choi working overnight shifts alone.
“He knows it’s a dangerous place to work,” Choi’s ex-wife Jenny Chon, 66, told the Daily News earlier this week. “I don’t talk to him much, but every time I talk to him on the phone, maybe once a year, he tells me it’s dangerous.”
Choi’s murder prompted a plea from the NYPD and Mayor Adams for store owners to ask customers to unmask themselves upon entering a shop — at least long enough for their faces to be seen.
“Once you show the store owner who you are and everything’s OK, if you don’t feel comfortable in the store without your mask on, by all means put it back on,” NYPD Chief of Department Jeffrey Maddrey said Monday. “But we should be helping one another to feel safe.”