Windsor Terrace grocers can finally relax now that cops have collared three suspects in connection with a month-long robbery spree.
Police charged the men with six gunpoint robberies between April 6 and May 9.
The reign of terror climaxed when the baseball bat-wielding owners of Blondie’s Deli, on Greenwood Avenue between East Seventh Street and Prospect Avenue, fought back, driving the thugs off in a dramatic street battle.
Turns out, the deli man’s resistance was the key to stopping the reign of terror. One of the thugs was captured shortly after that incident, cops said. He promptly gave up his two accomplices.
Victims said that these thugs had no qualms about pulling out their handgun and using it threateningly.
“One man pointed a gun at me and the other held a gun to my wife’s head,” said Jeff Samaha, who was at the counter at Pierre’s Deli 2, on the corner of 10th Avenue and 16th Street, on May 5, when the crooks burst in.
The thieves made off with an unspecified amount of loot, but also earned an enemy in Samaha, who dared the crooks to come back and take him on again.
“I’m not afraid — I’ll get this son of a bitch,” he told The Brooklyn Paper.
The spree started on April 6 at Sarubia Grocery, on the corner of Avenue K and East 37th Street in Flatlands, but that robbery was foiled because the thugs could not get the cash register open.
Three more incidents quickly followed:
• On April 22, the gunmen returned to Sarubia Grocery at noon, pistol-whipped a customer, and emptied the register.
• On April 29, the thugs entered a grocery store on Third Avenue in Bay Ridge at 10 pm, and one of the gunmen shot the clerk in the left shoulder before running off with a fistful of dollars. Police have not released the name of that store.
• On May 3, the two men stormed into Greenwood Mini Mart on Seventh Avenue at 20th Street at 8:30 pm, brandishing guns and demanding cash. They got what they wanted, then fled.
“They always hit someplace close to a highway, so they [could] get away quickly,” said a police spokeswoman.
