(Luis Cornelio, Headline USA) “Just take care of my kids.”
Those were the final words of Abdul Saleh, a New York City bodega worker before he died after being shot by a man reportedly known as a menace around the neighborhood.
In any other case, Saleh’s death at 28 would have been just another statistic of lawlessness in the Big Apple. His death, however, carried a grim twist as he had warned on television just a year earlier about the crime that would later kill him.
“People got shot, killed, sometimes you got robbed and the police never responds quick,” Saleh told WABC Eyewitness News in May 2025, in a video that later went viral on social media.
Saleh was gunned down Saturday night outside his family’s bodega, Sal’s Deli and Grocery, during what the New York Post described as a scuffle with an unidentified individual.
This bodega owner told ABC a year ago that he fears for his safety in NY
Last night, he was kiIIed by a shoplifter pic.twitter.com/0GWyo3Enaz
— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) April 27, 2026
The suspect, Kavone Horton, 28, was apprehended by the New York City Police Department on Sunday night and faces murder charges in connection with Saleh’s death.
“Before he died, he said, ‘Just take care of my kids,’” Saleh’s cousin, Basam Hussain, said in remarks to the New York Post.
The outlet reported that Saleh had just returned from a trip to Yemen, where his wife and two children—one aged three and the other two—currently reside.
It was during that trip that Saleh met his two-year-old son for the first time. Less than 24 hours after returning home, he was gunned down.
