Bronx shop clerk faces weapons charges after fatally shooting alleged robber, police say

A Bronx smoke shop worker who fatally shot a man allegedly robbing his store Wednesday has been arrested and charged with weapons possession, according to police.

The NYPD said 26-year-old Fares Alhazmi fired at 23-year-old Romel Carey, who was attempting to rob the smoke shop on East Tremont Avenue around 12:30 a.m.

The shop’s owner, Fatehi Kassim, said Alhazmi, his cousin, had reason to feel threatened. He said Carey got angry because Alhazmi was busy trying to help another customer.

“The guy come to him … he told him ‘I’m coming back, I’ll kill you.’ And he coming back after 35 minutes, he got the gun,” Kassim said. “For no reason.”

Kassim said he wasn’t sure if Carey was trying to steal anything from the store, but he was adamant that his cousin had acted in self-defense.

“You have a gun in the store, you take care of yourself. If he didn’t have the gun, he [would have] died, my cousin," he said.

Police said Carey was shot in the head and died at the scene. Alhazmi was arrested immediately after the incident as a person of interest, but was formally charged Thursday morning with criminal possession of a firearm.

Carey’s mother Myreka McLean spoke to Gothamist by phone Thursday as she was on her way to New York from the family’s home in Pennsylvania. She said her son was in New York visiting relatives, but didn’t know much else about the circumstances of the confrontation that led to his death.

“I need to find out what happened, because that's not in my son's character at all,” McLean said. “He's a young man raising a two-year-old. You know, he's just trying to get his life back on track. He was a man growing up, a young boy growing up, growing into a man.”

McLean said she purposefully moved Carey and his four younger siblings out of New York City for their safety. Once a dedicated basketball player, McLean said her son’s main focus was his own toddler.

“All my son cared about was his son,” she said. “I'm looking into lawyers, everything, because this is not right. What happened to my son was not right.”

Alhazmi, an immigrant from Yemen who has been in the U.S. for only a year, has been working at the store for about six months, according to Kassim. The shop used to be a regular bodega, but had recently transitioned to a smoke shop, he said.

“He say he want to make a couple of money, he want to go to school, he take care of himself, he send money for his mom, his father,” Kassim said, adding that Alhazmi was working to improve his English and had hoped to start attending college.

Alhazmi’s story is similar to that of Jose Alba, a 51-year-old Harlem bodega worker who was accused of fatally stabbing 37-year-old Austin Simon, a customer, after a dispute about store merchandise turned physical.

Alba was initially charged with murder and criminal possession of a weapon in Simon’s death, but Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg later dropped the murder charge after evidence emerged that Alba was acting in self-defense.

This story has been updated with additional information.