A Big Apple deli worker who was shot and killed while at work had expressed fears of falling victim to the rampant violence that was plaguing small businesses last year.
Abdul Saleh, 28, became the latest victim of that bloodshed over the weekend during a late-night scuffle that spilled out of his family-run Alphabet City store.
His tragic death came nearly a year after an interview he gave to WABC-TV News in a report about “panic buttons” for bodega workers to help protect them from armed and dangerous street thugs.
“People get shot, killed,” Saleh told the local station in May 2025. “Sometimes you get robbed and the police never respond quick, come three or four hours late.”
The interview came as the United Bodega Association business group announced a $1.6 million program to install panic buttons at 500 city stores amid a spate of violent crimes at delis and bodegas, including a series of fatal incidents in The Bronx earlier that year.
The buttons would bypass the traditional 911 system and alert NYPD central command directly.
It is not known if there was a panic button at Sal’s Deli and Grocery, at East 13th Street and Avenue B, where Saleh — a father of two young children — was working when a dispute erupted shortly after 11:30 p.m. on Saturday and spilled out onto the sidewalk.
The scuffle turned deadly when someone fired off shots, striking the bodega clerk in the torso and mortally wounding him.
Law enforcement sources told The Post that the alleged gunman, also 28, was wounded when one of the bullets ricocheted and struck him.
He was taken to a hospital with non-fatal injuries.
