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Porn Shop Worker Threatened With Knife After Asking Man to Leave, NYPD Says

By Maya Rajamani | November 7, 2016 10:55am
 Vishara Video at 797 Eighth Ave., between West 48th and West 49th streets.
Vishara Video at 797 Eighth Ave., between West 48th and West 49th streets.
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DNAinfo/Maya Rajamani

TIMES SQUARE — A homeless man threatened an employee at a porn shop with a box cutter and a butcher knife after the staffer asked him to leave a video booth inside the store, officials and another worker said.

Jamal Williams, 36, was inside the booth at Vishara Video, at 797 Eighth Ave., around 8:30 a.m. on Oct. 29 when the 41-year-old employee asked him to exit the booth because he hadn’t paid to use it, according to another worker and a complaint filed with the Manhattan District Attorney’s office.

An “irate” Williams then pointed a box cutter at the employee while moving toward him and pulled a butcher’s knife from his backpack and waved it at the employee, police and the DA’s office said.

“We said, ‘Please leave,’ but he was continuously shouting,” said a 68-year-old employee working at the store Friday, who declined to give his name.

Williams didn't insert money into the video booth, he added.

After threatening the 41-year-old employee with the butcher’s knife, Williams went outside the store and started calling employees outside to fight, the other worker recalled.

At some point during the incident, another employee called the police, he said.

Police officers who arrested Williams found the butcher’s knife in his backpack and a box cutter in his front right jacket pocket, the complaint said.

They also found a pocket knife and two bags of marijuana in his front left pants pocket, as well as a third bag of marijuana in his backpack, the DA’s office said.

Williams was charged with one count of menacing, two counts of criminal possession of a weapon and one count of unlawful possession of marijuana, the complaint said.

He’s currently being held at the Manhattan Detention Complex on $500 bail and is expected to appear in court on Nov. 17, city Department of Correction records show.

An attorney for Williams declined to comment Friday.

The 68-year-old video Vishara Video employee, who’s worked at the store for five years, said it was “the first time [he] saw this type of situation.”

“We don’t like this situation to happen because we lose our business,” he said. “Customers go running.”