A Brooklyn bodega worker stabbed to death by a customer angry he couldn’t buy loose cigarettes was a proud immigrant father working hard to provide for his children back in Mexico, according to a customer who befriended the victim.
Victim Diego Rodrigo Sandoval Nava, 33, made the agonizing decision to leave his daughter and son behind in Mexico and come to New York City to make money to send home.
“I know it doesn’t seem like much for a lot of people,” Sandoval Nava told friend Geysi Giron, who retold the conversation on a GoFundMe she created to raise money for the victim’s family. “But for me, it is something to be proud of because I can provide for my family in Mexico.”
Giron said Sandoval Nava referred to his daughter, Fernanda, as his princess and his son, Erick, as his champ. The proud papa called his kids every day and played Fortnite daily with his son, Giron said.
That was the routine until Friday afternoon when an irate customer stabbed him to death during a skirmish over cigarettes.
Cops said Sandoval Nava, who ran the deli counter, intervened during a clash between the killer and a cashier at the mini-market on Hegeman Ave. near Van Siclen Ave. in East New York about 3:05 p.m.
Cops and witnesses said they argued over the store’s policy not to sell loose cigarettes, with the customer fatally stabbing Sandoval Nava as the fight escalated.
Medics rushed Sandoval Nava to Brookdale University Hospital, where he died. The killer customer has not been caught.
The senseless slaying left a hole in the neighborhood, Giron said.
“Diego was fatally stabbed at the same place he loved working in,” Giron wrote in the fundraising post. “Diego was protecting and defending the 18-year-old cashier who didn’t know how to protect himself from angry/intoxicated customers.”
Sandoval Nava’s decision to come to New York City was the same tough choice his own father had made when Sandoval Nava was still a boy back in Mexico, Giron said.
After father and son were finally reunited in New York City, Sandoval Nava’s father died unexpectedly a year ago, Giron said.
“His dad had a heart operation and needed care,” Giron wrote. “Diego, after working 10 to 12 hours, would go to the hospital and sleep with his dad for weeks. He wanted to make up for all the time he had missed with his dad because he too had left them in Mexico when he was a teenager.”
In August 2024 his dad died after post-surgery complications, Giron wrote. Sandoval Nava raised the money to send his father’s body back to Mexico. Now Giron says she is just trying to do the same for her friend.
Giron, a secretary at East New York Family Academy, a school in East New York, met Sandoval Nava as a customer about a year ago — and connected with him because she ordered in Spanish.
“We immediately struck up a conversation about our nationalities and work,” she wrote.
In May, Mayor Adams and NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch announced the city would install panic buttons linked to the NYPD in about 500 bodegas across the five boroughs. The initiative came after a string of killings in bodegas, including two slayings in 48 hours in April.
It was not immediately clear if the bodega where Sandoval Nava worked had been equipped with a panic button.
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