ARREST IN 50¢ MURDER
Killer has 20 priors: cops
The man suspected of gunning down an 80-year-old Brooklyn bodega worker in a senseless dispute over 50 cents is a career criminal who lives a block from the slaying scene.
Mark Thomas, 41, of East New York, faces a maximum life sentence on charges he murdered the worker, Abdulla Yafaee, Tuesday night with a bullet to the chest.
Thomas had come up 50 cents short when he tried to pay for a $2 Corona beer at the 797 Deli on Stanley Avenue, police sources told The Post.
Denied his beer, he vowed revenge, swearing to the bodega workers, “I’m going to come back and shoot you all,” according to one source.
He allegedly returned four hours later and started firing. One bullet fatally struck Yafaee, a Yemeni immigrant.
“He came back with gun blazing, and this old guy caught the bullet,” a law-enforcement source said. “I’m amazed at the depravity.”
Yafaee “didn’t even have anything to do with the original dispute,” the source said.
“And he wound up losing his life — because he was at the wrong place at the wrong time.”
Thomas has not made a confession, but his image was captured in clear surveillance-camera footage from the bodega, and he was fingered in at least one witness lineup, law-enforcement sources said Thursday night.
He has some 20 prior arrests, including for robbery, drugs, forgery and criminal possession of knives, one source said.
Thomas has been in and out of prison since his first arrest in 1993, the source added.
He allegedly fled the bodega in the chaos of the shooting, but was picked up Wednesday night as he was getting into his car in front of his Wortman Avenue apartment a block from the crime scene, police sources said.
In addition to the murder rap, Thomas faces a weapon-possession charge.
As detectives escorted him from the 75th Precinct station house Thursday night, Thomas glared at photographers but said nothing.
Yafaee, despite his age, had been making ends meet by working at the 797 Deli as well as at a bodega near his apartment in Lefferts Gardens.
Colleagues, customers and family members described him as a wellloved and hardworking man.