A angry man from Queens has been charged with murder in the death of the eatery’s veteran delivery driver after reportedly harassing staff at a Chinese restaurant in the borough over a dispute about duck sauce.
Glenn Hirsch, 51, was detained at his house near Briarwood on Wednesday night. According to the NYPD, he was also charged with criminal possession of a firearm for the fatal shooting of Zhiwen Yan, 45, on April 30.
Yan, a father of three who relocated to New York more than two decades ago, was shot in the chest while performing his rounds on his scooter in Forest Hills, Queens, according to officials.
The shooting saw Yan and Hirsch, who was believed to be driving an older model of a Lexus RX3 SV at the time, briefly exchange words at a traffic light before Yan was hit near 108th Street and 67th Drive, in what is usually a quiet and close-knit area. A witness nearby later told investigators that the suspect fled the scene.
Yan, who worked seven days a week and held three jobs to support his family, had been working at the Great Wall restaurant for more than a decade prior to his death, 53-year-old employee Kai Yang told the New York Daily News
Another restaurant employee, Soi Chung, 70, told DailyMail.com that Hirsch had ‘multiple’ disputes with staff at the eatery and even pulled a gun on staffers during one incident in January.
Another incident last year saw the angry customer become peeved over the amount of duck sauce given to him in one of his orders, Chung told The New York Post, spurring a campaign of harassment, vandalism, and threats from the customer.
The beef with the rowdy regular, Chung said, spontaneously began at nighttime.
‘The customer came in and ordered some food,’ Chung, who has worked at the Queens establishment for 20 years, recalled to the Post.
The encounter was friendly first, according to Chung – but things quickly turned when the customer deemed the amount of duck sauce he had received with his order to be unsatisfactory.
‘He left with the food but then came back and said ”It’s not enough,”’ Chung said. ‘He came to the counter and wanted more food, more duck sauce.’
An argument then ensued, Chung told the outlet, spurring Yan’s and Chung’s employer to get involved.
‘They had an argument,’ Chung told the Post, ‘and the boss said, ‘It’s enough already.’
The veteran restaurant worker said that the jilted customer then walked out of the restaurant in a huff, before returning to vandalize the establishment with – the duck sauce.
‘The guy left the restaurant, and later came back and threw the duck sauce, everything, all over the place,’ Chung recalled.
‘The police came and took a report, but the guy was gone.’
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However, according to Chung, the strange saga was far from over – with Hirsch’s harassment campaign only growing more brazen and threatening.
‘After that, sometimes, he’d be waiting around outside,’ Chung told the Post in April, as cops continued to comb the city in hopes of tracking down Yan’s killer.
‘He’d say to the boss and to the delivery guy and to one of the chefs, “I remember you. I remember you,” the restaurant staffer said, adding that the customer twice vandalized Great Wall staffers’ cars, and once slashed the tires on the manager of the establishment’s vehicle.
The most brazen threat from the customer, Chung said, came earlier this year, when Hirsch menacingly waved a gun at the restaurant workers, spurring them to call 911.
Restaurant owner Kai Yang told the Post that the angry customer was put to the ground by employees, which included Yan, shortly after he came inside with the firearm.
Meanwhile, Yan leaves behind a wife and three children, aged two, 12, and 14.
‘This was a father of three children working three jobs – all food delivery,’ Yan’s nephew, who identified himself as Michael, said during a presser in April held outside the family’s home in neighboring Middle Village.
‘He came here in 2001,’ the relative went on. ‘He has been in this country over 20 years.’
He added: ‘It’s unacceptable that this happened. This is a very peaceful community. This never happened, this kind of issue.’
Despite Yan’s colleagues claims concerning Hirsch’s threatening behavior, it is currently unclear if the delivery man was a specific target.
A GoFundMe page, created by Kunying Zhao – Yan’s wife – shared to benefit her three children.
‘I’m starting a fundraiser for my husband because he passed away last night,’ Zhao wrote on May 1. ‘He was a hardworking delivery man and always provided for his family
The page surpassed its initial goal of $100,000, raising $198,684 as of Thursday morning.