A beloved Queens Chinese food deliveryman shot in the chest while riding his scooter in Forest Hills was killed by a bullet likely meant for someone else, police sources said Sunday.
Victim Zhiwen Yan’s grief-stricken widow sat at her living room table in Middle Village, wishing she and her husband had more time.
“My husband wakes up every day and just works,” Eva Zhao said through a translator Sunday, fighting back the tears that never stopped flowing as she searched for a recent picture of her husband. “He works so hard, he didn’t have time to take a picture,” she said.
Yan, 45, and Zhao had been married for seven years and have two daughters and one son.
“I keep crying,” Zhao said, breaking down. “He meant everything to me. He took good care of me and the family.”
Yan was nearing 108th St. and 67th Drive when a man began firing off shots in his direction about 9:30 p.m. Saturday, cops said.
NYPD officers collect evidence on 108th St. and 67th Drive Saturday. (Jeff Bachner/for New York Daily News)
The hardworking dad, who was on his way to his next delivery, was struck in the chest and fell off the scooter.
Medics rushed Yan to Elmhurst Hospital Center, where he died.
Yan worked every day juggling three jobs, relatives said. He had delivered food for the Great Wall Chinese restaurant on Queens Blvd. — about a half-dozen blocks from where the shooting took place — for more than a decade.
Shocked customers who had befriended Yan over the years gathered outside the shuttered restaurant Sunday to leave flowers and reminisce.
“He was always very pleasant, always with a smile, always very respectful. Even during COVID, he would deliver,” Great Wall regular Liza Padilla said. “He was a first responder in a sense. He was always there. When nobody could go out, they were still delivering. And he was one of the delivery people that we cherished.”
Andres Villa, a super of a building on 68th Drive, said Yan would deliver food and laundry to residents there. He knew Yan for 16 years.
“Rain and snow, he never stops. You got snow like this,” Villa said, gesturing to his knees.
“I literally was crying this morning, and I’m a big guy,” Villa added. “[He was] the kindest guy, friendly, great guy with my kids.”
Kai Gittens, 51, remembered the broad smile Yan always brought with his regular order of chicken wings, mixed vegetables in garlic sauce and beef fried rice.
“He’d deliver to you once, and he’d just call you ‘my friend’ every time he saw you on the street,” he remembered.
“You would see him in the building. He always greeted us,” added Jennifer Trujillo, 47, who showed up at the restaurant to pay her respects with her two young daughters in tow. “Even in the street, if he was on his scooter, he would remember us and he would always say hello.
Watching her mother tear up outside the restaurant, Trujillo’s 8-year-old daughter Rheagan clearly and innocently encapsulated what was on everyone’s mind.
“Whoever shot this man, I think it was the wrong thing to do,” the child said.
“He saw my kid when my kid was born,” said Great Wall customer Alex Colon, 42. “So sad, man. So sad. ... Everybody’s upset.”
Zhiwen Yan on his wedding day, with wife Eva Zhao. (Obtained by Daily News)
The man who shot Yan jumped into a light gray or tan sedan, which sped off east toward Queens Blvd., cops said. There was no indication the shooter and Yan knew each other or had clashed before the shooting, a police source said.
“There was no interaction between them,” a police source said. “It’s not clear if the [shooter] was aiming at someone else and hit the deliveryman or if he was just letting rounds off [randomly].”
The gunman has not been caught.
Yan’s death was the second homicide to take place in the bucolic section of central Queens this year, cops said. By this point last year there had been none in the 112th Precinct, which covers the area.
Saturday’s shooting was about a mile from the Juno St. home of 51-year-old Orsolya Gaal, who was knifed to death and stuffed in a duffel bag on April 16. A dog walker found her body discarded on Metropolitan Ave. on the edge of Forest Park. Her ex-lover, David Bonola, was charged in the killing five days later.
“It’s sad to see this happen in the neighborhood,” Padilla said. “It’s been always a very peaceful and calm, wonderful neighborhood to raise children in, to live in.”
“This doesn’t usually happen, so it’s very surprising,” longtime Forest Hills resident Collarini Schlossberg said Sunday of the shooting. “I’m here over 40 years, and nothing like this has ever happened.”
Yan’s killer, Schlossberg said, is “really sick.”
“People don’t seem to need a trigger other than what’s going on inside their crazy brain,” she said.
NYPD officers collect evidence on 108th St. and 67th Drive Saturday. (Jeff Bachner/for New York Daily News)
A GoFundMe to benefit Yan’s children says the deliveryman was “killed in a random act of road rage.”
“He immigrated from China and worked in food delivery for more than 20 years,” the GoFundMe notes. “[He] leaves behind his wife and three children, ages 2, 12, and 14.”
More than $22,000 had been raised for Yan’s family within six hours of the fund-raiser’s launch.
“I don’t know how I can explain how I feel,” the victim’s cousin James Zhao said. “We just want to work and make money and lay low and her husband doesn’t do anything wrong, nothing bad.”
“What’s the reason to shoot him?” he added. “It’s unbelievable.”
Family friend Grace Jin said the killing left her feeling unsafe.
“We’re feeling angry about the gun violence everywhere,” she said. “You never know who will get a gun from their pocket. [Yan] was innocent. [I] just hope the Police Department can solve this.”
Forest Hills and Rego Park, which are both protected by cops in the 112th Precinct, have seen a nearly 50% jump in crime this year, according to NYPD statistics.
As of April 24, the precinct has seen a 60% jump in robberies, from 15 last year to 24, and a 58% jump in assaults, from 19 to 30, cops said.
“It just shakes you to your core,” Great Wall customer Matthew Murray said of Yan’s slaying. “It makes you feel a loss of safety.”
“You could be two blocks away and he would go, ‘My friend!’ One hand up,” said Murray’s father, Neil Murray, 65.
“He delivered food to us maybe last Saturday. We always order from here. You saw him delivering everywhere. I was up near Kew Gardens and what do I hear? ‘My friend!’”
“You never see him have a miserable moment,” Neil Murray added.
He recalled the nor’easter earlier this spring, when he felt hesitant to order delivery because the weather was so bad. But they ordered, and Yan appeared in a long green poncho, cheerful as ever.
“He’s what I call the unsung hero,” Neil Murray said. “No one’s going to pay him attention because he’s just a delivery guy. But out here, he was the greatest.”
Copyright © 2021, New York Daily News
Copyright © 2021, New York Daily News