A new video clip shows the moment when bodega clerk Jose Alba tried to avoid confrontation with Austin Simon before fatally stabbing him during a physical altercation.
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Jose Alba,51, tells Simon,35, “Papa, I don’t want no problem, papa” moments before their fight after Simon walks behind the store counter. As previously reported, Simon entered the Blue Moon store on July 1 in Hamilton Heights after his girlfriend tried to buy a bag of chips for her daughter but the electronics benefits card was declined. The woman claims Alba snatched the bag of chips from the girl. She asks him. “Did you put the food?” Alba says in response, “OK, mama, let me do another time. My God.”
She continues to tell him that there’s money on the card. According to the New York Post, edited footage cuts off to Alba dealing with other customers and the woman starts screaming, “You can’t touch my daughter. Don’t snatch that out of my daughter, you f–king piece of shit! I’m gonna bring my n– down here and he gonna f–k you up. My n— is gonna come down here right now and f–k you up!”
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Alba tells her, “That’s not my fault, it’s not working.” Simon walks into the store moments later and asks him what happened. Previous footage shows Simon knocking the bodega clerk into a chair and the men start fighting. Simon was stabbed multiple times during the altercation. Alba was also stabbed during the fight and arrested by NYPD on murder charges. However, he was later released from Rikers Island on Thursday after prosecutors agreed to lower his $250,000 bond.
Blue Moon owner Osamah Aldhabyani said Alba did not want to risk going back to work and he is also afraid of retaliation by Simon’s friends.
Austin Simon’s ex-wife and other relatives speak out about the incident
Simon’s ex-wife, Tiana, said her ex-spouse is not the person that the public is trying to make him out to be and said they are judging him based on a surveillance video clip. He also loved his nine children and cared for them, relatives said.
“Personally, I don’t feel like it was self-defense. He stabbed him multiple times. That was overkill. Self-defense for a push? You got pushed, you’re sitting there, going back and forth with words. He just was trying to make him apologize to the little girl. Honestly, he was a great person. When he loves people he loves hard.”
Simon’s cousin said his girlfriend is the one to blame for his death as she got him involved in the altercation.
“What happened to my cousin and Alba started with her. After not being able to pay for whatever with her card, she went and got my cousin involved. He had a past. Everyone has a past. That does not mean he deserved to die like that. He was wrong for going behind the counter. Alba was wrong for treating the girl disrespectfully.”