They took his life on a dead- end street.
Chinese-food deliveryman Richard Salvia had no idea that he was walking into a trap as he delivered $40 worth of sweet-and-sour chicken, mixed vegetables and a General Tso chicken to a home on Grandview Avenue on Staten Island Tuesday night.
And with only a few days on the job, he hadn’t been at the restaurant long enough to know that the location was a notorious spot for luring potential robbery victims.
“I mean we never knew that would happen,” said Karen Aleman, a receptionist at Crown Palace restaurant on Forest Avenue, where Salvia, 50, was still in training.
Sources said Salvia, who lived in New Jersey, got into a confrontation with a gun-toting robber at around 8:45 p.m. in the Mariners Harbor section.
Surveillance video from the scene shows a gunman and another man approaching Salvia near the delivery address before Salvia pushed the man with the gun, the source said.
The weapon went off, fatally wounding the deliveryman, and the robbers fled before they got a chance to take Salvia’s money, officials said.
Fried rice, egg rolls and cokes littered the street where he lay.
Salvia was rushed to Richmond University Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead.
He still had cash in his pocket. There have been no arrests, but cops said they are looking for three suspects.
Police Commissioner Bill Bratton said the shooting was an isolated incident.
“It’s a very active investigation with information to work with,” Bratton said.
But residents said other delivery drivers have been lured to the dead-end street and robbed before.
There are at least two abandoned lots on the block, and it’s easy for a robber to hide.
Neighbors said some restaurants refuse to deliver to the location.
“I’ve been here 10 years, and it’s not the first time,” said one neighbor.
“You know robberies, stuff like that, yeah. But murder? No.”
Aleman, 18, had a hard time getting her head around it, too.
“He was a good guy,” the restaurant receptionist said. “Why would it happen to him? What did he do?”
Employees said no one at the restaurant had ever been robbed before, but the staff vowed to take precautions. One new rule: Call customers back before dropping off an order.
“When someone calls from another neighborhood, we call them before we’re outside and they come out,” Aleman said.
“We never go up to the buildings or anything like that. We tell them not to do that. But now, if it’s a new address and it’s a bad area, we probably won’t take it.”
Additional reporting by Larry Celona