The NYPD investigates at a shooting at the RC Petroleum in the Bronx on Tuesday night. (Byron Smith)
A hard-working immigrant working at a Bronx gas station while pursuing an accounting degree was fatally gunned down by one of a pair of hoodie-wearing thugs in a robbery last night, cops said.
Lamin Sillah, 28, a native of Gambia whose wife of 10 months is still in West Africa, was shot in the torso about 9:40 p.m. at RC Petroleum in East Tremont at East 182nd Street and Southern Boulevard, authorities said.
“He was a beautiful guy. He’s a very hard worker, a very good Muslim,” said Alhagie Ebou Cham, the victim’s uncle and the president of the United Gambians Association, which helps immigrants get settled in the US.
“He came here for his education, a better opportunity for that over here. His dream is he wants to go back to Gambia and be the very best accountant in the country.”
Cops said Sillah was in the station’s office counting his receipts when the creeps rode up on bicycles.
One acted as a lookout while the second pulled a gun on Jason Mwewa, who was pumping gas at the packed station.
”The guy pulled out the gun and he put it behind my back,” Mwewa said. “I just put my hands up, and he searched my pocket. And as soon as he was done, I walked away,” he told WABC.
The thug then went inside and confronted Salleh, who was counting receipts as his shift wound down.
“The victim was surprised, he puts his hands up, but the perp shoots the guy for no reason, and then when he’s on the floor he shoots him two more times,” a law enforcement source told The Post.
“My co-worker, he was doing paperwork. He didn’t see what was happening. And that’s when the guy pointed a gun at him. And he just yelled something, like he was surprised, like ‘Yo!’ and that’s when I heard three shots rang out,” Mwewa said.
The victim collapsed to the floor, where the thug emptied one of his pockets of $30 cash but left $89 in another.
Cops said the perps the fled on the bikes with the cash.
Saleh was rushed to St. Barnabas Hospital with three gunshot wounds to the torso and was pronounced dead. No arrests have been made.
Cham said Sillah only started working at the gas station 10 days ago and had misgivings about the job
“I don’t think he liked the job here,” he said.
He described his nephew as a brilliant student who was taking accounting and English classes at a for-profit school in Midtown while also working five days a week at the gas station.
“He’s a very, very smart guy, he’s memorized almost the whole Koran. I go to the mosque with him every Friday,” he said as two of the victim’s cousins Mohammad Cham, 24, and Ama Mariama, 30, sobbed uncontrollably and tried to console one another nearby.