A 19-year-old Burger King employee was brutally gunned down during a robbery during her shift as a cashier.
Kristal Bayron Nieves, an employee with the restaurant chain’s East Harlem location, was working when an unknown assailant came into the building around 1:00 a.m. on Sunday. The gunman was wearing all black and demanded Nieves give him money from the cash register. Despite the teen giving the man $100, she was still shot in the torso. During the terrifying ordeal, a male customer was pistol-whipped, and a female manager was punched in the face. Both are expected to survive.
Nieves and her family had only been in New York for a few years after relocating from Puerto Rico in search of a better life. She had only been working at the Burger King for several months.
The family and community members assembled outside of the restaurant Sunday to hold a vigil for Nieves. During the solemn gathering, NYPD Community Affairs Chaplain Robert Rice called for an end to the violence.
“We are sick and tired of the violence in our community. When is enough going to be enough? When will we put the guns down?” Rice stated.
CBS New York reporter Kiran Dhillon shared security footage from the robbery on her Twitter, blurring out the victim.
Police have released this video of an armed man who shot a #BurgerKing cashier last night during a robbery in East Harlem. The victim, 19 year old Kristal Bayron Nieves, has since died of her injuries @NYPDnews @CBSNewYork #nyc #eastharlem #nycgunviolence pic.twitter.com/EZkWJ19L3i
— Kiran Dhillon (@KiranDhillonTV) January 9, 2022
A GoFundMe has been established to pay for Nieves’s funeral. As of Tuesday, it has raised nearly $15,000.
