Metro

I’ll have a hero! 7-Eleven clerk saves four in shooting

(NY Post: G.N.Miller)

BAD DUDES: Two thugs on surveillance walk into the shop before one started shooting.

BAD DUDES: Two thugs on surveillance walk into the shop before one started shooting.

QUICK THINKING: A 7-Eleven clerk named Jonathan tells a cop how he took customers into a back room and braved bullets yesterday. (
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Oh, thank heaven — for this heroic 7-Eleven clerk.

A worker at a Bronx outlet of the convenience chain saved four customers during a wild armed robbery yesterday, herding them into a back room — and then barricading the door with his body as a gunman shot out the window.

“The situation could have ended with everyone dead,’’ said the proud clerk, whom co-workers identified only as Jonathan.

“I didn’t care about myself, I just didn’t want anyone to get hurt.”

The drama began at the 7-Eleven at University and West Tremont avenues in Morris Heights just after 7:30 a.m., when two gun-toting thugs entered the convenience store, law-enforcement sources said.

The perps were hunting for a man who had just run into the store to hide from them, the sources said.

One of the armed perps went up to the 22-year-old man they were chasing and said, “Give me your money!” the sources said.

Jonathan, who was at the front register, immediately pushed the button on a silent alarm to alert the cops, then quickly directed the customers into a small back storage room.

The targeted man, too, might have fled into the room, and his assailants fired at him four times, missing.

Just as Jonathan placed his body against the door to keep the thugs out, one bullet shattered its 8-by-8-inch Plexiglas window, witnesses and cops said.

“[Jonathan] put his back against the door to stop it, basically to mantle it, lock it, keep it closed,’’ said coworker Jay Fontannez, who wasn’t in the store at the time but talked to customers who were.

“They said he was a hero. They said that was a heroic situation.

“Herding them into the back, putting his back to mantle [the door], that is heroic to me.”

Jonathan was much more modest.

“I’m just a guy who thought to do the right thing. I guess it was adrenaline,’’ he said. “I am no hero, I don’t claim to be.

“I was scared out of my mind,’’ he admitted.

“It was my first time in that situation. I didn’t have time to think. We went to the back room. It was a spur-of-the-moment thing.

“I was trying to keep everyone safe — that’s what counts.”

Still, he acknowledged, “I don’t know if someone would do the same for me.

“I doubt it,” he said.

“I’m different than most people. I like to think outside the box. I put other people’s needs before myself, I just want everyone to be OK.”

Jonathan refused to give out any personal information for fear of retribution.

“I’m scared that they might come back. But I don’t remember their faces — that’s what counts,” he said.

Cops were poring over store surveillance video for clues to the perps, who fled.

The store remained closed yesterday following the incident, and a 7-Eleven spokeswoman said the employees “did what they needed to do.”