BLOOD ON THEIR HANDS: Stickup suspects (from left) Christopher Dorsey, Ernesto Delgado and Orlando Ramos are led by police out of a Bronx station house yesterday. (
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An NYPD cop accidentally killed a Bronx bodega worker who ran right into him while fleeing a holdup yesterday — and now the would-be robbers are on the hook for his death, authorities said.
Surveillance video shows Reynaldo Cuevas, 20, darting from his family’s deli on Franklin Avenue in Morrisania at around 2 a.m. just as police arrived.
He slams into the housing cop and is shot once in the shoulder as the two fall to the sidewalk. Cuevas was pronounced dead at the hospital.
Because he was killed during a robbery, the three men accused of trying to rob the store were slapped with murder charges — even though they hadn’t brought bullets.
They were also charged with robbery and weapons possession, police spokesman Paul Browne said.
Night manager Felix Mora said Cuevas had clocked out for the night but doubled back to Aneuryns Deli Grocery to grab a bar of soap and forgot to lock the door to an area in the store behind bulletproof glass.
The three men walked in and held up the workers at gunpoint, cops said.
“They started asking us for money. They asked for the safe,” said Mora, 43.
“They couldn’t find it [the money], so he started hitting me with the gun. I showed him the money, in a box of Dutch [cigar box].”
“They said, ‘If you move, I’m going to kill [Cuevas].’ ”
A masked Orlando Ramos, 31, pointed his .32-caliber handgun at the worker while accomplices Ernesto Delgado, 28, and Christopher Dorsey, 17, grabbed packs of Newport cigarettes, scratch-off tickets and $718, cops said.
A customer ran across the street to call 911.
“Policia! Policia! Policia!” Ramos yelled as cops from the NYPD’s housing unit PSA 7 and the 42nd Precinct arrived.
He and Delgado fled to the back of the bodega, leaving their unarmed accomplice, Dorsey, in the front, cops said.
The workers then made their escape.
Mora ran out first, followed by Cuevas.
“The events . . . transpired in a matter of seconds and the collision between Mr. Cuevas and the officer in split seconds,” said Police Commissioner Ray Kelly.
“The night manager was able to convey quickly that he had been held up by gunpoint, but Mr. Cuevas, in an understandable effort to get away from the gunman as fast as possible, ran straight into the officer.”
When Cuevas was shot, he said “ha” and touched his shoulder, Mora said.
Dorsey surrendered immediately, and hostage negotiators tried to coax the others out, police said.
Delgado finally surrendered after police threatened to unleash a dog into the store, sources said.
Emergency Service Unit officers went in for Ramos and found him tied with yellow rope to a pole in the basement — a ruse to trick cops into thinking he was also a victim, police said.
The officer who fired his weapon, a seven-year veteran, was taken to Jacobi Hospital for observation and placed on administrative duty.
The officer had never fired his weapon on duty before, sources said.
Cuevas’ death was a crushing blow to his family, especially his mother — coming just two years after his father was gunned down by a chain-snatching thug in the Dominican Republic.
Cuevas had worked long hours at the bodega to send money back home for his daughter, Jamie.
He had planned to follow in his sister’s footsteps and become a Marine.
Cuevas’ distraught mother fainted from the stress yesterday as she went to view his body at St. Barnabas Hospital.
“She’s beside herself. She lost her sister and her husband in two years and now this,” said family friend Marisela Rodriguez, 41. “She can’t handle it.”
Additional reporting by Georgett Roberts and Natasha Velez