A young Queens father gunned down outside a Brooklyn Dollar Store was swept up in clash sparked by a woman who sprayed a rival with mace, police said.
Antoine Ruffin jumped into the fight on Franklin Ave. near Lafayette Ave. in Bedford-Stuyvesant around 7:30 p.m. Monday after the three women he was with began arguing with each other and were booted from the dollar store, NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny said.
The 27-year-old victim was supposed to meet up with his fiancée, who had a sonogram appointment for their unborn child, but he “didn’t show up,” Kenny said.
“Somehow he found himself in Brooklyn,” Kenny said, explaining that Ruffin was a friend of one of the three women at the heart of the squabble and was caught on surveillance camera going into the store with them.
After they were kicked out, Ruffin hung back and watched as the three women argued with each other outside the store, Kenny said.
“One of the females produces a can of mace and sprays one of the other females,” Kenny said. “At this time, an unknown male appears and punches that female in the head.”
Ruffin joined the fight and was shot dead by the puncher, who remains on the loose.
The victim was struck six times in the side, buttocks, and back, Kenny said. None of the women were wounded.
Heartbroken relatives said Ruffin had attended a birthday cookout in Far Rockaway hours before his death.
“It doesn’t make sense to me,” the victim’s sister, Emani Hester, 23, told the Daily News Wednesday. “He had just left from family. I don’t understand how he got involved in anything. It doesn’t make sense. For him to have gotten into an argument, how could that escalate so quickly that they pulled a gun and shot him?”
Hester said her brother was a hard-working family man who wasn’t involved in any kind of street beefs. Ruffin had two children already, in addition to the baby on the way, relatives said.
“My brother doesn’t have a gun,” the sister said. “He was no gang member, no street dude. He was a father of three, a great father, a family man. He was never involved in any problems with people. He was about his family, his kids.”
