Cops have released photos of a suspect wanted for gunning down a panhandler inside a Manhattan 7-Eleven last week, in hopes someone recognizes him.
The suspect shot 43-year-old Mark Jackson in the neck inside the convenience store on Feb. 12, then fled into the 50th St. subway station and onto a northbound C train, cops said.
The man the NYPD is looking for wore a dark-colored sweater with white lettering on the front, multicolored pants, gray sneakers, a black backpack and a blue medical mask.
Jackson, who was homeless, regularly held the door open for change at the Hell’s Kitchen store at Eighth Ave. and W. 39th St., but got into a fight over the coveted turf with the gunman around 10:30 a.m.
“I opened the door and stepped in, and inside of two seconds I heard an argument,” said one shopper who wished not to be named. “I heard, ‘P—y! P—y!’ and then a bang, and I turned on my heels and walked out.”
A friend of the victim, who knew him by the nickname “Beezy,” said, as well as holding the place’s door open for change, the slain man provided “unofficial security.”
“That’s my man,” said the 22-year-old pal, who would only identify himself as Huby G. “[He’s a] cool dude. Calm, cool and collected. I don’t know what altercated this right here, but, yeah, it’s crazy out here.”
Workers in stores next to the 7-Eleven said arguments and fights were common at and around the convenience store — particularly among a few local homeless men who brawl over who gets to open the door for customers.
“You see the arguments, the fights out here all the time,” the superintendent of a commercial building near the store told The News. “There’s always something going on here, all hours of the day and night.”
A porter in the commercial building next door said the 7-Eleven is a “magnet for trouble.”
“Everybody tends to fight over the door,” he said. “That door is like territorial”
Anyone with information is asked to call Crime Stoppers at (800) 577-TIPS. All calls will be kept confidential.
