By Alex Davidson
Police arrested and charged a Corona man Monday with shooting an immigrant bodega store owner in February during a robbery in Jamaica, the Queens district attorney said.
DA Richard Brown said authorities charged Tyrone Price, 20, of 98-23 Horace Harding Expressway with murder, attempted robbery and criminal possession of a weapon in the Feb. 1 shooting of 38-year-old Mohammed Alamgir. Price, along with two other unknown suspects, was allegedly involved in the store robbery in which Alamgir was shot once in the head, the district attorney said.
Price faces up to 25 years in prison if convicted, Brown said.
“The victim was a hardworking immigrant whose death has shattered his family,” Brown said. “The crime that took his life was violent and brutal and will be vigorously pursued.”
Price was arraigned Sunday in Queens Criminal Court in Kew Gardens in front of Judge Michael D. Aloise and was being held without bail, the district attorney said.
He was also indicted last Thursday as part of a police operation to take down a violent drug gang in Lefrak City.
The two accomplices who went into the Dhaka Market grocery store with Price have not yet been apprehended, the district attorney said.
Price, armed with a gun, and his two accomplices entered the Jamaica bodega at 153-32 Hillside Ave. at 8:40 p.m. Feb. 1 and made demands for money, according to the criminal complaint. Price pointed a handgun at another person inside the grocery store and, after a struggle among the three intruders and store occupants, fired one shot that killed Alamgir, the complaint said.
Witnesses to the shooting said at the time that Alamgir was shot above his left eye as he stepped inside the market after his brother and two other men fled from Price and his two accomplices. They said Alamgir, also known as “Juel,” emigrated about 13 years ago from Bangladesh.
Police had suspected the Jamaica robbery was part of a spree of shootings earlier this year by a group of suspects who targeted immigrant-owned shops in Queens and Brooklyn and killed people in those stores. Authorities have arrested at least one suspect in connection with the string of shootings but speculation remained as to whether the Hillside murder was connected.
With Price's arrest, however, authorities confirmed the Dhaka Market homicide was not linked to the earlier crimes.
Friends of Alamgir said he had filed immigration papers at the beginning of the year in the hope of bringing his wife and child to America.
Alamgir, survived by his wife in Bangladesh and son, was taken to Mary Immaculate Hospital after the Feb. 1 shooting. He was pronounced dead the next day when doctors removed him from life support after determining he was brain dead.
Aloise set a return date for Price of July 24, the district attorney said.
Reach reporter Alex Davidson by e-mail at TimesLedger@aol.com or by phone at 718-229-0300, Ext. 156.
