CROWN HEIGHTS — A man threatened to kill two female employees at a hosiery shop in Crown Heights last week, then fled when the store's manager hit the alarm, the manager told DNAinfo New York.
Manager Devorah Shagalov and a second female employee were working at Crown Heights Hosiery at 312 Kingston Ave. around 10:20 a.m. on Dec. 15, she and police said, when a man entered the shop and immediately began making threats.
“He came in and he stood and stared me in the eyes and said, basically, ‘You need to all be eliminated’ and ‘I’m going to kill you all’ and ‘I have a right to be in this country,’" Shagalov said, adding that the suspect carried a small dark colored book that looked like a passport.
"He was angry," she said.
Shagalov immediately told the man to leave the store and when he didn't, she pressed a panic button on a security system that had been installed at the shop two weeks earlier, she said.
When the man heard the alarm, he ran out of the store, she said.
The man fled northbound on Kingston Avenue toward Union Street, police said.
The NYPD released a photo Monday of the suspect, who was wearing a light colored baseball cap, a black jacket and blue jeans. He is between 40 and 50 years old, police said, approximately 5’ 9” and 170 pounds.
Shagalov said in the 15 years the hosiery shop has done business on Kingston Avenue, many strangers and panhandlers have come into the store, but she never felt truly threatened before the Dec. 15 incident — and is glad she called for help when she did.
“He just sounded mad," she said. "And I’m like, with what is going on now, you see something, you say something."
Anyone with information in regards to the incident is asked to call Crime Stoppers at 1-800-577-TIPS (8477).
