Killing of Chinese food deliveryman may have stemmed from duck sauce dispute
He may have been killed in a simmering beef over duck sauce.
The owner of the Chinese restaurant whose food deliveryman was fatally shot in Forest Hills told The Post on Monday that the disgruntled customer now sought for questioning in the slaying had previously been in a rage over the amount of duck sauce he got with an order.
Kai Yang, owner of Great Wall on Queens Boulevard, said the duck-sauce dispute occurred late last year — and sparked a series of increasingly disturbing encounters with the angry 50-year-old customer.
“In November, he came in to pick up his order. We have duck sauce out, serve yourself,” Yang, 53, said through an interpreter. “He takes all of it, full bin, entire bin. He takes his order and leaves. He came back and says, angry, ‘I need more duck sauce.’ I say, ‘OK, OK, it’s here. Help yourself.’
“I give him more. He say, ‘No, I want my money back,’ ” Yang said. “I say, ‘Sorry, it’s COVID, I can’t take your order back after, and I give you more duck sauce.’ He calls police! They came. They ask me if I can refund his money. I say, ‘No, I can not.’ ”
After that, “my car start[ed] getting damaged,” Yang said.
“It was a new car, 2021 Honda CRV. Around back, tires slashed three times. I start parking in front so I can see. We see him on Jan. 28 damaging the car, and I come out and say, ‘No! No!’ and he pulled a gun on me! I ran back inside. I call police, fill out report.”
Yang said the crazed customer was wrestled to the ground by employees during the gun incident.
Among those who tackled the violent patron was Zhiwen Yan, the 45-year-old deliveryman shot dead Saturday night, the owner said.
But despite repeated calls to police over time about the angry customer, the patron was never charged, Yang said.
“I call so many times,” the owner said.
The NYPD would not say whether the man had been arrested in any of the encounters, noting that he has not been busted in Yan’s death. The Post is withholding the customer’s name because he has not been officially named as a suspect or a person of interest in the slaying.
A police source said he has at least one arrest dating to 2001 on a charge of armed robbery in Queens.
Longtime Great Wall worker Sooi Chung, 70, confirmed Yang’s account of the disturbing encounters with the irate customer and recalled how the man only got more daring and dangerous over time.
“Sometimes, he’d be waiting around outside,” Chung said. “He’d say to the boss and to the delivery guy and to one of the chefs, ‘I remember you. I remember you.’ “
It wasn’t clear i f the deliveryman he addressed was ever Yan.
Chung said the harassment finally ended when the workers reported the gun incident to cops in January.
Police are now probing whether Yan was targeted by the customer, with detectives seeking to question the man, according to law-enforcement sources.
Yan, a married father of three who migrated from China about 20 years ago, was making a delivery near 108th Street and 67th Drive in Forest Hills around 9:30 p.m. Saturday when he was shot once in the chest and knocked off his scooter.
Police sources have said the description of the vehicle fleeing the scene of the fatal shooting matches that of the customer’s car. Both vehicles are the same model, color and general year — a gray older Lexus RX3 SUV.
Yan was rushed to Elmhurst Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
The shooting occurred about a half-mile from the restaurant. The customer has an address in the other direction, about 2 miles from the eatery, but also possibly one more locally, although it wasn’t clear where, some of his neighbors told The Post.
People at the restaurant patron’s nearby apartment building described him Monday as trouble.
“I call him ‘the Terminator,’ ” said a worker at the building. “He’s in and out quickly. We had issues with him. He always wears those dark wrap-around sunglasses.
“He’s a hoarder,” the worker added. “He was grabbing people’s packages, and when they called him on it, he argued, yelled, denied it. We got cameras all over the building.”
Meanwhile, the Great Wall restaurant was closed for the second straight day Monday — with Yang saying, ” We are not opening till [Yang’s killer] is caught.
“I am worried,” the boss said.
A memorial for the beloved slain deliveryman has sprouted up outside.
“My wife and I were talking to him Saturday evening, 5 or 6 o’clock, just before he was killed,” said Jerry Kwok, a neighbor who had known Yan for about 11 years. “He smiled and asked about my children.
“I’m still in shock,” said Kwok, 53. He was so nice. He would be so friendly to everyone. It made him happy to help people.
“Why did this happen to him? A father of three,” he said. “What’s going to happen to his kids? This is so bad. The city is getting nuts.”
Others, including community leaders, gathered outside the restaurant Monday to mourn Yan’s senseless death.
“Safety is the biggest concern in Asian American communities,” Dany Chen, founder of the Chinese-American Justice Alliance, told the Post.
“This incident in Forest Hills came four days after another shooting in Fresh Meadows. Asian neighborhoods are in a panic. Something must be done.”
According to NYPD stats, major crimes in the 112th Precinct, which covers the neighborhood where Yan was killed, are up nearly 48 percent so far this year over the same period last year.
As of Sunday, there were two murders in the precinct so far this year, compared to none last year, and 32 felony assaults compared to 20 over the same time span in 2021.
Robberies in the area are also up, to 25 so far this year compared to 16 at the same time last year, the stats show.
Additional reporting by Joe Marino and Tina Moore
