The owner of the Queens sports store where Wendy’s massacre suspect Craig Godineaux worked as a security guard was the victim of a brutal execution-style murder attempt and robbery in 1993.
Sasson Biton – who hired Godineaux to guard his sports store on 165th Street in Jamaica – was shot in the head but survived the attack by a group of thugs wielding automatic weapons.
It’s unclear whether Biton ever told Godineaux about the attack, but it’s the type of story that would leave an impression.
It was 1:30 p.m. on the afternoon of New Year’s Eve, 1993, and the shopping center at 165th Street near 89th Avenue was overrun with holiday shoppers.
Five to eight young men in their twenties wandered into the store – then a leather-goods shop – and announced a holdup.
Biton was shot in the head and pistol-whipped.
Employees and shoppers ducked for cover as bullets began to fly.
In an extraordinary act of bravery, security guard Louis McClendon traded fire with the posse of gunmen, killing one but taking several bullets himself. Armed only with a revolver against several semiautomatic weapons, McClendon fired at least five shots from his .38-caliber handgun, killing Israel Whetston, 21.
The other thieves “just walked out like nothing happened, hoodlum bopping,” one witness told a reporter at the time.
The assailants soon took off down the block and headed in different directions. Two were later apprehended, and four of the guns were recovered.
Neither Biton or the now-retired McClendon could be reached for comment last night.
Cops charged that in the Wendy’s attack last Wednesday, Godineaux and partner John Taylor tied up seven employees, covered their heads with bags to avoid getting blood splattered on them, and shot each in the head.
Godineaux was picked up at Biton’s store after Taylor, who was busted earlier, fingered him, cops said.