Abdul Saleh told a television reporter last year that bodega workers were getting shot, robbed, and ignored by police. On Saturday night, the 28-year-old was gunned down outside his family's deli in Manhattan's Alphabet City, one day after returning from Yemen, where he had met his 2-year-old son for the first time.

The killing happened just after 11:30 p.m. outside Sal's Deli and Grocery, at the corner of East 13th Street and Avenue B. Police said an argument broke out inside the store, spilled onto the sidewalk, and ended with gunshots. Saleh was struck in the torso. EMS workers rushed him to Bellevue Hospital, where he could not be saved.

Law enforcement sources identified the alleged gunman as Kavone Horton, 28. One of the bullets ricocheted and struck Horton himself, The Post reported. He was hospitalized with non-fatal injuries and charged with murder, manslaughter, and weapons possession.

What makes this case especially bitter is the trail of warnings Saleh left behind. In May 2025, WABC-TV News interviewed him for a segment about a $1.6 million program by the United Bodega Association to install panic buttons in 500 city stores. Saleh used the moment to describe the danger he faced every shift.

A worker who saw it coming

Saleh's on-camera words now read like a forecast of his own death. Fox News reported the interview, in which Saleh laid out the reality for workers behind the counter:

"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 captures the exhaustion of people who feel abandoned by the system meant to protect them: "Always something happens, and no one really cares."

Nearly a year later, the panic-button program had not reached Sal's Deli. Kim Gallagher, owner of the nearby Unleashed Spa, told The Post that Saleh's store did not have one.

Gallagher was among dozens of mourners who gathered Monday afternoon near a makeshift memorial outside the deli. She described Saleh in terms that had nothing to do with policy debates:

"He was wonderful. He really was. I know people say that about people who die but he really was. He was always smiling."

Four police reports, one dead worker

Saleh's cousin Basam Hussain, 31, who owns a bodega in East New York, Brooklyn, stood outside the memorial and filled in details that raise hard questions about whether this killing was preventable. Hussain told The Post that workers at the deli had filed four police reports about Horton. At one point, they had gotten him banned from the store for about a year.

The pattern, Hussain said, was familiar and relentless. Horton would come in demanding free merchandise.

"He'd want stuff for free. Take, grab, and go, and always try to fight with them."

Four reports filed. A known aggressor. A temporary ban that expired. And then a fatal confrontation on a Saturday night. The NYPD did not immediately comment on the history Hussain described.

Hussain said the slow police response Saleh complained about on television was the same problem the family experienced in real life. He described calls that went unanswered or were answered hours late, a pattern that wore Saleh down long before the final encounter.

"They'd call the cops, and they would never answer. They'd come three or four hours later. He was talking about this. Same story."

Across the country, sudden public killings continue to claim lives in settings where people should feel safe, stores, food courts, sidewalks. The common thread is not geography. It is the gap between the danger ordinary people face and the protection they actually receive.

One day back on the job

The timeline of Saleh's final days sharpens the tragedy. He had been in the United States for about 15 years. His wife and two children, a 3-year-old daughter and a 2-year-old son, remained in Yemen. He traveled there and met his boy for the first time.

He flew back on Friday. A separate Post report on the shooting quoted another cousin, Emmad El-Hassil, who said simply: "He just started working again today."

The following night, Hussain said, a known neighborhood menace walked into the deli. What followed was the confrontation that ended Saleh's life. Sources told Fox News the dispute began when the man refused to pay for a meal.

Hussain said Saleh's brother was with him in those final moments, holding him as he bled out on the sidewalk. Saleh's last words, according to his cousin, were not about himself.

"Before he died, he said, 'Just take care of my kids.' That's what he tell him."

Saleh had been planning to bring his family to the United States. Hussain said he was preparing for an immigration interview scheduled in the coming months. That process is now over.

"He was super happy. He was about to bring them to this country. He was about to apply... He had an interview in a couple of months and then he just died."

The system's failure, measured in reports filed

The question this case forces is not complicated. A man filed four police reports about a specific individual. He went on local television and described the danger. He asked, publicly, why police took hours to show up. And then the very person he had reported killed him.

Hussain summarized what Saleh felt in the months before his death:

"To be honest, he didn't want to be here no more. He didn't feel safe. Last year, he was talking about his safety."

That is not hindsight. That is a man telling anyone who would listen that the situation was deteriorating, and the institutions responsible for public safety failing to act on the information he gave them. In other recent cases, ignored warning signs preceded fatal violence, and the pattern keeps repeating.

A Pop's Pizza employee working nearby that night told The Post what the moment sounded like from inside: "I was making the pizza and I heard a 'pop' and then after a while another 'pop.'" Two sounds. One life gone.

The bodega panic-button program that prompted Saleh's television appearance was supposed to connect 500 stores directly to NYPD central command. Whether it would have saved Saleh is unknowable. What is knowable is that his store did not have one, and the police reports he filed did not stop the man who killed him from walking back through the door.

Incidents like this feed a broader pattern of lone-offender violence that intelligence officials have identified as a growing domestic threat. The perpetrators are often known to their victims or to law enforcement well before the fatal moment arrives.

Open questions

Several facts remain unresolved. Police have not publicly stated an official motive. No court documents or docket numbers tied to Horton's charges have surfaced in available reporting. It is unclear whether the NYPD reviewed or acted on any of the four police reports Hussain described. And no one has explained why the temporary ban on Horton expired or what, if anything, replaced it.

Meanwhile, Saleh's wife and two children remain in Yemen. The interview that was supposed to bring them to America will not happen. The man who leaves behind a family searching for answers is a story repeated in cities across the country, and the answers never seem to arrive in time.

Abdul Saleh did everything right. He worked. He filed reports. He spoke up on camera. He followed the rules. The system he trusted to protect him did not return the favor.