September 24th, 2008
Grandmother Swings Away
By: Jaime Zuckerberg
A 64-year-old grandmother used a baseball bat to thwart an attempted robbery of the deli she owns on Queens Boulevard.
Police said Josephine Bonanno, the owner of Roma deli in Rego Park, left her son, Phil, to mind the store for a few minutes around 7 p.m. while she went down the street to pick up a Christmas present for her grandson, a $65 Easton baseball bat. When she got back, she saw a tall young man in a ski mask yelling at her son and threatening to shoot if he didn’t hand over the money in the cash register. With the wrapped baseball bat in hand, Bonanno, who stands about 5-feet tall, ran over and whacked the young man on the head. He fell to the floor, unconscious, as her son called 911. The alleged robber was identified by police as Harvey Lee, 18, of 99th Avenue, Rego Park.
“I saw Phil being threatened, ” Bonanno said later. “I had this heavy metal bat in my hand and I just took a swing. Mickey Mantle I’m not, but I’ve watched enough Little League games in my life to know how to swing a bat.”
Willie Lopez, a robbery squad detective, said Lee was knocked out cold with a minor concussion and was taken to Queens Medical Center for observation. He is expected to be arraigned on robbery charges today. Whether Lee actually was armed is not clear. Phil Bonanno told police Lee had his hand in his pocket as though he had a gun, but that he did not see a gun.
With the Christmas holiday a few days away, this is a busy time of year at the deli. Bonanno was flooded with catering orders from neighborhood offices and stores and had about $6,000 in the register. “She had much more cash than usual,” Lopez said.
Bonanno employs five full-time and three part-time workers. The deli is open from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. Yesterday, in order to keep up with the heavy workload, Bonanno had most of her employees come in early. She also asked her son, Phil, an accountant on Long Island, to come and help out. Normally, the full-time workers would stay until 7:30 p.m., Lopez said. But when things started to slow down at 6:30 p.m. she let them go early. The part-time workers arrive at 7:30 p.m.
“They were both going to leave then and take the day’s receipts to the bank and go home,” Lopez said. But at around 7 p.m. when no one was in the store, she decided to go down the street and pick up the baseball bat.
Bonanno has owned the deli for more than 20 years. When her husband died a few years ago, she continued running it on her own. Asked about the incident yesterday and what made her hit Lee, she said it was probably the mothering instinct. “Someone was going to shoot my son,” she said. “Money I can replace. My son I can’t.”
