NYPD: Robbery pattern targets 7 businesses in Brooklyn and Queens
NEW YORK -- CBS2 has obtained new video from a string of armed robberies in Brooklyn and Queens.
Police say the robbers struck seven businesses and got away with more than $20,000.
On Sunday night, one of the victims shared his terrifying story.
CBS2 spoke to a cook at a deli who said he didn't think he would survive the armed robbery at his business. Thankfully, he did, but he lost more than $1,000 of his own money.
Video shows two people with masks walk into the N7 Deli and Grill in Williamsburg and climb on the counter. An employee pushes one of them back, but then one robber takes out a gun as a third robber walks into the store. They climb the counter again, and one moves to the other end of the deli, where a cook was working.
"I was like afraid of them because they are really dangerous people," the cook named Emad said.
Emad said he's still worried about his safety and for that reason asked not to share his full name.
"They said, 'Check your hands up! Check your hands up!' and they said like 'We will kill you if you move,'" Emad said.
Police say the robbers stole $4,000 from the register during the Tuesday morning heist, and $1,300 from the pocket of Emad's jacket, which was hung up near the grill. It was a week's worth of pay for the cook, money he says he was planning on transferring to his family in Egypt for a surgery for his mother.
"I am working all the week for my salary," Emad said. "I talk to my friend that I am going send it [in] morning, but I can't."
Police say the robbers left the deli and robbed a food truck nearby here at Bedford Avenue and North 7th Street and then a nearby gas station.
The NYPD also suspects the same robbers committed four other robberies in Queens and Brooklyn over the past week and a half.