A plague of deadly weekend violence in a city already racked by a rising murder toll left at least five gunmen on the loose today — including the coldhearted killer of a beloved bodega owner.
Gunslingers struck in nearly every borough in just 22 hours.
“It’s like, ‘Here we go again,’ ” said Anthony Parker, 44, a security guard at the Franklin Avenue Dollar Store in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, near the beauty shop where a gunman was wounded during his Saturday showdown with the gutsy cop.
Parker said his own store has been stuck up at least six times.
“People who end up doing this are young guys trying to get a rep,” he said.
Suspected salon shooter Winston Cox left a trail of blood to his family’s nearby Lafayette Gardens apartment. He was arrested early Monday morning, and charges were pending.
READ MORE: BROOKLYN SALON ROBBER ARRESTED
CLICK HERE TO SEE A MAP OF THIS WEEKEND’S VIOLENCE AND MORE INFORMATION ABOUT THE KEY INCIDENTS
Hours after that shooting, an armed killer escaped from a Queens bodega after gunning down the owner.
Tragically, the victim, Juan Torres — whose brother was killed in a Brooklyn deli robbery more than a decade ago — died rushing to the defense of another sibling.
Torres, a 54-year-old father of three, was shot once in the head during the botched robbery at the Lucky Grocery & Deli on Merrick Boulevard in Laurelton after he ran to the front of the store to help younger brother Felix, 50, said cops and kin.
“Juan had been watching a baseball game” in the back when the thug walked in, said Felix’s wife, Francis Torres.
“The [robber] came in and grabbed [Felix’s] neck and put his head on the counter with a gun. He put the gun to his head.”
She said her husband desperately told the killer, “If you want money, I’ll give you money. Don’t kill me. I have a family.”
Then, “Juan came walking through with the hammer” to try to save him, and the thug killed Juan, she said.
Minutes before Juan Torres was fatally shot, he had called his sick wife to let her know he’d be home soon, said another sister-in-law, Xiomara Inga, 49.
“He told her, ‘I’m feeling tired, and my feet hurt, but thank God I have off tomorrow,’ ” Inga said.
Felix Torres was too distraught to speak to cops right after his brother’s coldblooded slaying, but later managed to help them create a sketch of the killer.
Fourteen years ago, Juan and Felix’s older brother, Jesus, also was shot and killed when he tried to fend off a robber at a corner deli in Brooklyn.
Several years later, the family suffered even another blow, when Ramon Adames, a clerk at their Queens deli, was fatally gunned down, relatives said.
Juan Torres’ slaying came as police were hunting still more shooting suspects involved in a spate of other, unrelated crimes over the weekend:
* In Brooklyn, a 12-year-old boy was shot in the shoulder as he walked on Lafayette Avenue near Tompkins Park in Bedford-Stuyvesant early yesterday. The boy was in stable condition at Kings County Hospital.
* In Queens, a house party turned violent after a man with a gun opened fire on 147th Avenue in Springfield Gardens, wounding three men and a woman, police said.
* A killer blew away a career criminal in a crowded Chelsea diner Saturday morning. Corey Scott, 28, was fatally shot after a dust-up at the Good Stuff Diner on West 14th Street at about 4:45 a.m.
* In The Bronx, a man was killed in an Olinville apartment Saturday. Cops found Michael Brown, 25, with a gunshot wound to the face in a fourth-floor pad on Magenta Street near Holland Avenue at about 8 p.m. Brown was pronounced dead the scene, cops said.
The city’s murder rate has been on the rise.
As of Oct. 17, there have been 425 homicides — up from 367 at this point last year, a 15.8 percent boost, according to NYPD figures.
Additional reporting by Kirstan Conley, John Doyle, Perry Chiaramonte and Frank Rosario