Second holdup for longtime candy shop proprietor 
The New York City Police Department is seeking the public’s assistance in locating and identifying the following suspect who is wanted in connection with the gunpoint robbery of a candy store.
Children and longtime residents dart into the narrow, cluttered candy store in Bedford Park to grab sweets, papers, or lottery tickets. Sometimes they’ll sit on one of the spinning red stools and belly up to the counter for a cup of Joe.
The proprietor is a demure and kindly Asian woman who has run the shop for 22 years, and twice she has had a gun thrust in her face.
Since the last holdup, on Jan. 5, the store owner remains shaken, fearful that the thief might return.
“I was so scared,” said the woman, who didn’t want her name or that of the store printed.
On Tuesday police released a video of a man they suspect of the crime. He is Hispanic, 5’5” to 5’7” and about 150 lbs., shown walking back and forth in front of an apartment building in the area.
The shopkeeper recounted the details of the robbery.
Shortly before 3 p.m. a swarm of children had just left the tiny place with red awning on Bedford Park Blvd. near Valentine Ave. Her husband was in the shop’s back room.
Suddenly a masked man with his sweatshirt hood pulled over his head moved toward her at the cash register, brandishing a pistol.
“Open,” the man said to her quietly. “Money.”
He ran out with the drawer’s contents, about $400 in small bills.
Three or four years ago, she said, another man confronted her in the same spot with what she believed was a gun, though it was wrapped in a black plastic bag.
But in that incident, “Someone came in and helped me,” the woman said. The culprit fled empty handed.
About 10 or 15 years ago another clerk was robbed of about $50 in the store.
Less than three blocks away on Dec. 21, three masked robbers trailed bodega worker Anselmo Porras from his job at Nizao Grocery on Briggs Ave. to his apartment on Marion Ave., where they shot him dead through a bedroom door.
The candy shop owner said police visit her every day because, they told her, robbers often return to the scene of a successful take. A police cruiser was even stationed outside the store for 10 days, she said.
“This place is changing,” the woman said. “It used to be nice.”
Police ask anyone with information about the Jan. 5 robbery to contact Crimestoppers at 1-800-577-TIPS (8477), or submit tips by logging onto WWW.NYPDCRIMESTOPPERS.COM. Alternately, text tips to 274637 (CRIMES) then enter TIP577.
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