Jericho gas station attendant shot dead, police say
Nassau County police at a crime scene Thursday morning, Jan. 29, 2015, at a BP gas station on Jericho Turnpike in Jericho where Hany Awad, a 56-year-old attendant, was found shot to death Wednesday night behind the counter, Nassau County police said.
A gas station attendant was found fatally shot behind the counter of a BP station Wednesday night in Jericho -- possibly the result of a botched robbery connected to a pair of similar armed robberies earlier in the week, Nassau County police said Thursday.
Hany Awad, 56, of Levittown, was shot once in the torso, police said. He was discovered by a customer about 9:10 p.m. Wednesday "lying on the floor behind the counter" of the Jericho Turnpike station, said Insp. Kenneth Lack, a police spokesman. A Nassau ambulance medical technician pronounced Awad dead at the scene at 9:30 p.m., police said.
Lack said police are investigating whether the killing was linked to a pair of armed robberies of BP gas stations on Monday night in which a thief fired a gun without injuring anyone.
"It is distinctly possible this is related to the other cases," said Lack during an afternoon news briefing at police headquarters in Mineola, adding that the two Monday robberies "seem to be linked."
Lack said police are checking ballistics evidence from all three incidents, but he hedged on saying Awad's killing was a botched robbery. "It's certainly a possibility, but we can't say it definitively," Lack said.
Awad's family declined to comment. The Jericho gas station was closed Thursday and police were at the scene for most of the day.
In the first Monday robbery, a masked man fired a single shot into the counter of the BP station in New Hyde Park after demanding money.
Thirty-five minutes later, a masked man of a similar description demanded cash and fired a shot into a wall inside the Thomaston station.
Lack said in both cases the station attendant "delayed or refused" to turn over money. He would not say how much money was taken.
"We believe he fired the gun to make the victims go faster for money," Lack said.
Asked whether two men arrested by Suffolk police Thursday for allegedly robbing a gas station in Dix Hills earlier in the day might be connected to the Nassau cases, Lack said investigators were looking into it. Police are asking anyone with information about the homicide to call Crime Stoppers at 800-244-TIPS.
Lack said Crime Stoppers' board has "generously increased" the reward from the standard $10,000 for unsolved homicides to $25,000. Awad's killing is Nassau's second homicide in 2015.
With John Valenti
John Valenti, a reporter at Newsday since 1981, has been honored nationally by the Associated Press and Society of the Silurians for investigative, enterprise and breaking news reporting, as well as column writing, and is the author of “Swee'pea,” a book about former New York playground basketball star Lloyd Daniels. Valenti is featured in the Emmy Award-winning ESPN 30-for-30 film “Big Shot.”
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