Abdul Saleh, a 28-year-old father of two, was shot and killed outside his family's East Village deli late Saturday night, barely 24 hours after he landed back in the United States from a trip to Yemen, where he had met his 2-year-old son for the first time. As he lay dying, he asked his family to take care of his kids.
The shooting happened outside Sal's Deli and Grocery at about 11:30 p.m. after an argument with a man workers say had a long history of stealing from the store and harassing its employees. Kavone Horton, 28, has since been charged with murder, manslaughter, and weapons possession, the New York Post reported.
Saleh's cousin, Basam Hussain, told the Post what the young father said as he bled out:
"Before he died, he said, 'Just take care of my kids.' That's what he tell him, 'Just take care of my kids.'"
Saleh left behind a 3-year-old daughter and a 2-year-old son, both still in Yemen with their mother. He had just returned from visiting them. The trip had been the first time he held his boy.
Hussain described Horton as a repeat offender at the family store. He said Horton would come in, take what he wanted, and refuse to pay, and that confrontations were routine.
"He'd want stuff for free. Take, grab, and go, and always try to fight with them."
Workers at Sal's Deli had filed what Hussain called "a slew of police reports" about Horton's menacing behavior. Despite those reports, Horton kept coming back. On Saturday night, the dispute reportedly started inside the store over an unpaid meal, then spilled out onto the street. Cops said the alleged gunman opened fire outside.
Saleh suffered a gunshot wound to the torso. He was taken to Bellevue Hospital, where he was pronounced dead. Police sources said one of Horton's own bullets ricocheted and struck him as well.
The case fits a grim pattern. Just weeks earlier, another man was fatally shot outside a Manhattan deli after an argument escalated into gunfire, a reminder that these small stores sit on the front lines of the city's street violence.
What makes this killing even harder to stomach is that Saleh saw it coming. Roughly a year before his death, he spoke publicly about the risks bodega workers face every shift. In an interview with Eyewitness News, as Fox News reported, Saleh described a system that left store workers exposed and unprotected.
"People got shot, killed, sometimes you got robbed, and police never respond quick, they always come three, four hours late."
He added a line that reads now like an epitaph:
"Always something happens, and no one really cares."
Those words hung in the air for a year. Then he was gunned down outside his own store by a man his family says they had reported to police multiple times. The rising crime that prompted surging robberies across the city's transit system has not spared the corner bodegas, either.
New York's bodega workers have been sounding alarms for years. The fear is not abstract. Fox News noted that rising crime had already prompted the installation of panic buttons in city bodegas, a measure that speaks to how dire conditions had become before Saleh's death. Filing police reports, installing panic buttons, speaking to reporters on camera, Saleh and workers like him did everything the system asks of citizens who feel threatened.
And the system did not hold up its end.
Horton, by the family's account, was a known quantity. He allegedly stole repeatedly. He allegedly harassed and fought with workers. Reports were filed. Yet he walked into Sal's Deli and Grocery on Saturday night as if nothing stood in his way. When the argument moved outside, he allegedly pulled a gun and fired.
This is the lived reality for thousands of small-business owners and their employees in New York City. They work long hours behind counters in neighborhoods where enforcement is thin and consequences for repeat offenders are lighter than the crimes. When officials frame shootings as abstract "gun violence" rather than the predictable result of letting known aggressors cycle through the system, they insult the people left to absorb the consequences.
Saleh's family is now left to explain to a 3-year-old girl and a 2-year-old boy why their father is not coming home. He had just held his son for the first time. He flew back to the United States, picked up a shift at the family store, and never walked out alive.
Horton faces charges of murder, manslaughter, and weapons possession. The specific court and case details have not been publicly identified. His condition after being struck by his own ricocheting bullet has not been disclosed.
Open questions linger. How many police reports did workers file about Horton, and on what dates? What action, if any, did police take on those reports? Was Horton on parole, probation, or otherwise known to the criminal justice system? None of that has been answered publicly.
Across the country, similar stories keep surfacing, innocent people caught in crossfire because disputes that should have been contained long ago were allowed to fester until someone pulled a trigger.
Abdul Saleh told a reporter a year ago that nobody cares when bodega workers get hurt. He filed reports. He went on camera. He kept showing up for his shift.
His last words were not about himself. They were about his children. That tells you everything about the man, and everything about a city that failed him.
