He may have been killed in a simmering beef over duck sauce.
The owner of the
Chinese restaurant whose food deliveryman was fatally shot in Forest Hills told The Post on Monday that the disgruntled customer now sought for questioning in the slaying had previously been in a rage over the amount of duck sauce he got with an order.
Kai Yang, owner of Great Wall on Queens Boulevard, said the duck-sauce dispute occurred late last year — and sparked a series of increasingly disturbing encounters with the angry 50-year-old customer.
“In November, he came in to pick up his order. We have duck sauce out, serve yourself,” Yang, 53, said through an interpreter. “He takes all of it, full bin, entire bin. He takes his order and leaves. He came back and says, angry, ‘I need more duck sauce.’ I say, ‘OK, OK, it’s here. Help yourself.’
“I give him more. He say, ‘No, I want my money back,’ ” Yang said. “I say, ‘Sorry, it’s COVID, I can’t take your order back after, and I give you more duck sauce.’ He calls police! They came. They ask me if I can refund his money. I say, ‘No, I can not.’ ”
After that, “my car start[ed] getting damaged,” Yang said.
“It was a new car, 2021 Honda CRV. Around back, tires slashed three times. I start parking in front so I can see. We see him on Jan. 28 damaging the car, and I come out and say, ‘No! No!’ and he pulled a gun on me! I ran back inside. I call police, fill out report.”
Yang said the crazed customer was wrestled to the ground by employees during the gun incident.
Among those who tackled the violent patron was Zhiwen Yan, the 45-year-old deliveryman shot dead Saturday night, the owner said.
But despite repeated calls to police over time about the angry customer, the patron was never charged, Yang said.
“I call so many times,” the owner said.
The NYPD would not say whether the man had been arrested in any of the encounters, noting that he has not been busted in Yan’s death. The Post is withholding the customer’s name because he has not been officially named as a suspect or a person of interest in the slaying.
A police source said he has at least one arrest dating to 2001 on a charge of armed robbery in Queens
Longtime Great Wall worker Sooi Chung, 70, confirmed Yang’s account of the disturbing encounters with the irate customer and recalled how the man only got more daring and dangerous over time.
“Sometimes, he’d be waiting around outside,” Chung said. “He’d say to the boss and to the delivery guy and to one of the chefs, ‘I remember you. I remember you.’ “
It wasn’t clear i f the deliveryman he addressed was ever Yan.
Chung said the harassment finally ended when the workers reported the gun incident to cops in January.
Police are now probing whether Yan was targeted by the customer, with detectives seeking to question the man, according to law-enforcement sources.
Yan, a married father of three who migrated from China about 20 years ago, was making a delivery near 108th Street and 67th Drive in Forest Hills around 9:30 p.m. Saturday when he was shot once in the chest and knocked off his scooter.
