A hard-working Queens merchant whose Korean immigrant family owns two small businesses on the same block was gunned down in cold blood yesterday during a botched heist of their jewelry store.
Steven Woo, 53, owner of W.S. Jewelry and Jea & Sons Supermarket – three doors apart on Jamaica Avenue in Woodhaven – was hit in the stomach by a single bullet during a brazen attempted robbery shortly after he opened the jewelry store at 10 a.m.
As Woo lay dying inside the locked store, frantic family and nearby merchants used a hand truck to break the glass door to reach him.
It was too late.
“There were bloody footprints around the store,” said neighborhood worker Shara Ulloa. “His mother and [sister] were screaming and crying and the police kept telling them, ‘It’s going to be all right.’ “
The distraught sister, her eyes glazed and face stained with tears, cried, “My brother got shot – I don’t know why! They just shot my brother!”
Woo’s wife, Jessica, sister and brother-in-law, whose names weren’t immediately available, were working at the grocery store when the violence erupted.
“I knew this would happen,” Jessica Woo sobbed to her friend Maria Carbone hours after the bloodshed.
“Once they had an argument, and she said, ‘Sell the store. Jewelry is dangerous. Get a 99-cent store,’ ” Carbone quoted Jessica Woo pleading.
Police said Woo apparently struggled with the lone gunman – who was wearing a black shirt and pants and dreadlocks – and when the weapon discharged, the thief fled in a black Jetta, gunning the car the wrong way down 92nd Street.
Woo was pronounced dead at Jamaica Hospital. A manhunt for his killer continued last night.
“Everybody loved him,” said customer Harriet Weiffenbach. “They’re a lovely family. The whole neighborhood is going to miss him – not just me.”
Friends said Woo had come to the United States with his parents just after the Korean War, and since then had first established the grocery, and then the jewelry store.
“The whole family works hard, from early morning to night, almost 18 hours a day, seven days a week,” said family friend Dr. Douglas Kim. “I feel very sorry to lose this kind of person in our community.”
Another friend of the Woos, Robert Im, described a scene of grief and immeasurable loss.
“His wife keeps crying and crying,” said Im. Woo had a son, Tom, 23, and daughter, Ann, 20.