A woman is in custody for the fatal stabbing of a postal worker following a dispute over sandwiches at a Manhattan deli on Thursday, law enforcement sources told the Daily News.
The 36-year-old mailman was on duty for the U.S. Postal Service when he stopped at Joe’s Grocery on Lenox Road near W. 118th St. to order a sandwich around 2:30 p.m., cops said.
When the postal worker placed his order, a woman there became enraged, claiming he had cut her in line and the two began shouting at each other, a witness told The News.
“It was over a sandwich,” said Janet Rich, who was in the deli buying coffee when the fight broke out. “It was, ‘I was next. No, I was next.’ It was for nothing.”
Rich said that she and another woman inside the store attempted to intervene, but that neither party appeared willing to stand down.
“I got in between them — twice,” said Rich. There was another woman with dreadlocks [who] said, ‘Don’t do this, you have a good job. Let this go.’”
The postal worker “took off his coat and said, ‘You want to stab me? I picked up his coat and put it back on. I was trying to prevent the fight.”
Rich described the woman as “huge” at about 6’ 5″ tall and said she appeared to be on high on drugs, as she was literally “foaming at the mouth.”
The argument ended when the woman drew a small steak knife and stabbed the postal worker at least three times, Rich said.
“She started stabbing him and the next thing you know blood was everywhere,” Rich said.
Cellphone footage recorded by Rich shows the wounded postal worker lying on the deli floor in a pool of blood as a man attempts to help him.
Medics rushed the victim to Harlem Hospital, where he died.
The suspect fled to her apartment located on W. 118th St. just a few doors down from the deli, sources said.
A knife could be seen lying next to a pool of blood beyond police tape on Thursday.
Rich said she identified the woman as the killer for police, who placed the woman in custody Thursday evening.
Charges were still pending Thursday night, cops said.
In a bizarre coincidence, Rich, who works as a hoist operator, was working at the Waldorf Astoria hotel in Manhattan Thursday when another worker fell 40 feet to his death, and said she rode the elevator with medics to a third-floor ballroom where they would pronounce the man dead at the scene.
“What a day,” said Rich. “You can’t make this up.”
