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Shooting in Chinese take out restaurant

Sunday, January 14, 2007

(Brooklyn - WABC, January 13, 2007) (WABC) -- Customers looking for Chinese takeout got a whole lot more Saturday when two armed men tried to rob the place and shot two people.

The restaurant is on Malcolm X Boulevard in Bedford-Stuyvesant.

Eyewitness News reporter Jeff Pegues has the latest.

Law enforcement sources say there is more to this crime than meets the eye. This may have been a case of witness intimidation at this hour. That's what the investigators said to be focusing in on as they search for a motive and the suspects.

"That's wrong, they didn't bother anybody. They tried to help people out," a neighbor said. "I don't know why people would do that to them."

And that's what police investigators are trying to find out: Who stormed the Chinese restaurant at the corner of Malcolm X Boulevard and Lexington. It happened around 2 p.m. on Saturday.

A 34-year-old woman was shot in the face and a 37-year-old man in the hand.

"It's terrible. I mean, they're nice people, you know, we order food from there all the time," Brooklyn resident, Aura Green, said. "It doesn't make sense."

As police try to sort it all out, law enforcement sources tell Eyewitness News they are investigating whether the suspects were trying to intimidate the witness to a previous robbery.

Sources say what happened here wasn't a robbery because it doesn't look like a suspect got a way with anything.

Saturday, heavily armed emergency service units searched the neighborhood looking for the two suspects. With the area sealed off to the public, some residents had to wait at the police tape before being allowed to go home.

"They didn't tell us anything. They just said they're going in, searching the houses and doing investigations, so we have to wait," one of residents said.

There was still a lot of activity in this neighborhood several hours after this shooting. There is a search on the ground for the suspects and the police had a chopper in the air as well.

As for the victims, the 34-year-old woman who was shot in the face, is fighting for her life. She is in critical condition at Woodhall Hospital. The 34-year-old man, who was shot in the hand, is in King's County Hospital and he was in stable condition late Saturday.

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