A Manhattan bodega worker was arrested for allegedly stabbing a man to death during a fight over a bag of chips, police said Saturday.
Jose Alba, 51, is accused of plunging a knife into the chest of 35-year-old Austin Simon inside the Hamilton Heights Grocery on Broadway near West 139th Street late Friday night, the NYPD said.
The violent fight stemmed from an earlier argument Alba allegedly had with a woman who was looking to buy a bag of chips but apparently didn’t have enough cash to pay for the snack, cops said.
The customer, who had entered the store with a child, then stormed out and summoned Simon, an NYPD spokesman said.
The two men got into a verbal spat that “turned physical” when Simon apparently “went around the counter” and attacked the store worker, who then “chose to take a knife and plunge it into the victim’s chest,” the spokesman said.
Police got to the bodega after receiving a 911 call of an assault in progress there at about 11:05 p.m. — and found Simon stabbed twice in the chest and once in the neck, cops said.
EMS took Simon to Harlem Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
Alba was hauled in for questioning and later charged with murder and criminal possession of a weapon. Police recovered the knife at the scene.
The incident was one of two deadly stabbings reported in Queens and Harlem late Friday and early Saturday, police said.