Bodega Robbery Ends in Fatal Shooting of Unarmed Man

NEW YORK — When a man jumped over a counter to rob a market in the Bronx late Sunday night, the store’s owner shot him in the face and then called 911, police said.

The man, Daniel Meeks, 32, had no weapon and was later pronounced dead at Jacobi Medical Center, police said.

The owner of the bodega had a license to own a .357 Magnum revolver, a law enforcement official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the ongoing investigation.

There are no charges pending against that store owner, said Patrice M. O’Shaughnessy, a spokeswoman for the Bronx district attorney’s office.

Relatives of Meeks and members of the community said the shooting at J Market at 1260 Morrison Ave. in the Soundview section of the Bronx marked another death of an unarmed black man by gun violence. Other residents, however, have sided with the bodega owner, arguing that he was defending himself.

Reached on his cellphone Monday, the store’s owner, Jin Jie Chen, 43, declined to comment about the incident. “I am very tired,” he said in a brief interview in Mandarin. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

Outside the bodega Monday, Cassiel Morales, 28, who has known Chen for years and had watched him deliver Chinese food, said he could not understand the killing of an unarmed man.

“His life? If you’re unarmed I’m going to teach you a lesson, I’m not going to kill you,” Morales said.

James Kevin Mitchell, 43, disagreed.

“If you come into my spot I got to protect myself,” he said. “How was he supposed to know he was unarmed?”

Police said it was rare in New York City for a shop owner to retaliate with a gun during a robbery.

An employee at the nearby Fu Xing Chinese takeout restaurant, Du Chen, who is not related to Jin Jie Chen, said the bodega owner had security cameras installed outside the six storefronts he owned, including J Market. At the Chinese restaurant, a sign on the cash register warned against paying with counterfeit bills.

“We were never robbed, but two people used fake money this past year,” said Chen, 33.

In the doorway of a home in the Justice Sonia Sotomayor Houses, about a half a mile from the market, a woman identified herself as Meeks’ mother. She said she had identified his body late Sunday night. She added that her son had been dealing with bipolar disorder since he was 13.

Robert Taveras, 52, who sold the property to Chen in 2015, said that shortly after the sale, Chen disclosed to him that he had gone to a shooting range to take lessons before getting a handgun permit.

Taveras said he also was involved in a robbery attempt at the store that the J Market replaced. When he was a store clerk, he had to hand over money in his register, he recounted. He, too, started the process of applying for a handgun permit, but decided not to pursue it, he said.

“If you got a gun it’s going to happen like that, you’re going to kill someone or they’re going to kill you,” he said.