A 17-year-old teen was knifed to death during a caught-on-camera clash with an older man outside an East Harlem Korean restaurant, police and witnesses said Saturday.
Victim Carlos Rivas and a 22-year-old friend had just made an order at K-Street Food near the corner of E. 108th St. and Second Ave. at 6:15 p.m. Friday when they came to blows with 62-year-old suspect Saul Sanchez, who was also a customer at the restaurant, cops said.
“It’s a fight for I guess nothing,” said Moon Shin, an employee of K-Street Food. “So sad. They maybe fight outside first. I don’t see.”
Shin, 66, was working the counter when all three men were in the small storefront eatery.
“[The older man] makes an order and pay and [he] walked out, but two young guys [were] pushing everywhere,” she recalled. “Then they [went] outside fighting.”
The horrific stabbing is hauntingly similar to the murder of on-duty postal worker Ray Hodges, who was knifed to death in a Harlem deli a day earlier during an argument over his spot on a sandwich line, cops said.
Harrowing video obtained by the Daily News shows Rivas and his friend wrestling with a man as they scramble out of the Korean restaurant.
Once they hit the sidewalk, the man grabs Rivas by the collar and stabs him in the chest and stomach before both fall to the ground.
“It was straight stabs,” recalled the co-owner of the Your Highness smoke shop next door to the Korean restaurant, who saw the fight on his surveillance camera. “[The man] was holding [Rivas]. He was holding him by his collar.”
As the struggle continues, Rivas’ friend grabs a chair left outside K-Food and strikes the stabber over the head with it before jumping on the stabber’s back, the video shows.
The stabber lets the teen go and was confronting the friend when Rivas suddenly collapses face first onto the sidewalk.
“Just seeing the kid on the floor that way was horrible,” the smoke shop owner, who would only identify himself as Ray, told The News. “Watching the video, you see it now today but not realizing these are just the last few minutes of his life.
“It’s disturbing and it’s sad that his life had to end that way,” he said. “[Rivas] was dazed and you could see him at that point just fall to the ground. And then his friend that was with him realized that he was stabbed and was holding his chest to stop the blood from leaking.”
The stabber ran off when Rivas collapsed. His friend continued to comfort him as police were called to the scene.
Rivas remained conscious and was sitting up and talking to his friend, the video shows.
EMS took Rivas to Harlem Hospital, but he couldn’t be saved, cops said. The friend, who was stabbed in the left arm, was also taken to an area hospital.
As police investigated, Sanchez returned to the scene and surrendered. He was taken into custody and was charged with murder, assault and weapons possession.
His arraignment in Manhattan Criminal Court was pending Saturday.
Police did not immediately disclose what sparked the fight.
Shin, who provided the victim with napkins to staunch the bleeding, believes Rivas and his friend had gotten into an argument with Sanchez before they began fighting in her restaurant.
Video shows Rivas and his pal leaving a smoke shop before entering K-Street Food. They step up to the door at the same moment Sanchez, wearing a fur-black coat with a fur collar, approaches.
Rivas’ friend first opens the door. Sanchez grabs the handle, opens the door wider and was about to step in when Rivas’ friend jumps in ahead of him.
Rivas was the last one to enter the eatery, the video shows.
The two young men ordered before Sanchez and the three had words inside the eatery, but Shin had no idea what they were saying to each other.
“They just [began] pushing here then pushing in the door” before they went outside, Shin recalled. “I never seen people dying right in front of my face.”
When Rivas fell, Shin “was just thinking of his mother,” she recalled.
“I’m a mother, too,” she said solemnly.
The murdered teen lived in the Melrose section of the Bronx, about three miles from where he was killed, officials said.
He was the second city teen to die violently on Friday, according to cops.
A half hour earlier in the Bronx, two boys, both 17, were shot during a gang-related attack on Macombs Road near Cromwell Ave. in Highbridge at about 5:45 p.m., police said.
Medics rushed Andrew Mora to St. Barnabas Hospital with a wound to the left side of his chest. He died at the hospital a short time later.
The 17-year-old victim was shot in the stomach and was also taken to St. Barnabas, cops said. No arrests have been made.
Hodges, a USPS mail carrier who worked out of the Morningside post office in Harlem, was stabbed by 28-year-old Jaia Cruz at Joe’s Grocery on Lenox Ave. near W. 118th St. at about 2:30 p.m. Thursday, police said.
Witnesses said Hodges was about to make an order at the deli counter when Cruz accused him of cutting her place in line.
The argument escalated and Cruz stabbed Hodges five times with a steak knife in the neck, chest and arm, according to prosecutors.
Cruz was charged with murder and was ordered held without bail at her arraignment.
