BENSONHURST: Cops: Couple wanted in 99-cent store killing called 911

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By Will Bredderman

Brooklyn Daily

The mystery couple police say know the identity of man who gunned down two Southern Brooklyn shopkeepers is the pair that found Isaac Kadare’s blood-soaked body inside his 86th Street 99-cent store last Thursday, a police source told Brooklyn Daily.

The insider said that the young man and woman phoned 911 at 8:45 pm on Aug. 2 after entering Amazing 99-Cent and Up Deals near 19th Avenue in Bensonhurst and finding Kadare, 59, dead of a gunshot to the head and stab wounds to the neck.

“They’re the ones who found him lying there,” the source said.

Police have linked the Kadare murder to the July 6 murder of Mohamed Gebeli, 65, the owner of Valentino Fashion on Fifth Avenue between 77th and 78th streets in Bay Ridge. The same .22 caliber handgun was used to shoot both men, investigators said.

Kadare’s 18-year-old son told reporters that his father was killed for $900 in rent money he had collected from a tenant in his building.

But Kadare never installed any surveillance equipment in his store, so it’s unknown what happened in the shop in the moments before he was killed.

Investigators have suggested that race might have been a motive, since both victims were from Egypt.

But cops also said it was possible that the killer — described as a 5-foot-nine Hispanic wearing dark sunglasses — may have a psychotic obsession with numbers, noting that Kadare’s store was at 1877 86th Street while Gebeli’s address is quite similar: 7718 Fifth Avenue.

Anyone with information about the crime should call the NYPD CrimeStoppers hotline at (800) 577–8477 or visit the CrimeStoppers website at www.nypdcrimestoppers.com. All tips will be kept confidential.

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