A Chinese restaurant in Queens was vandalized on Saturday afternoon by a regular customer who had been kicked out of the establishment earlier in the day for not wearing pants, the owner said.
The disgruntled man returned to 4 Choices & A Soup on Roosevelt Avenue in Flushing with a hammer at 4:40 p.m., smashing doors, windows and glass surrounding the food bar, according to the owner and security footage.
‘”He has already been to our store several times today. I have already asked my employee. My workers [said he had] been there before without pants,” Jenny Xie, 48, told The Post in a phone interview.
“Just disgusting. So we told him to get out.
“He had no underwear,” added the restaurateur.
It was not the first time the suspect had caused a stir at the restaurant, the owner said.
“He pees in front of the store. One day he had no [clothes] on.”
The suspect was filmed wearing a red t-shirt, swinging his hammer with reckless abandon, leaving widespread destruction and piles of shattered glass in his wake.
The man sometimes visits the restaurant several times a day, talking to each other about his family in Chinese, the owner said.
“Everyone knows he has a mental problem, so most of the time we serve him right away,” Xie said. “We don’t wait too long to bring him his food.”
The unidentified suspect was quickly arrested and charges against him were pending, the NYPD said.
Despite his destructive outburst, Xie said she suspected he hadn’t taken his medication and hoped he would get psychiatric help.
“We think if he is on his meds he is very normal. He comes in and says ‘hello’ to us,” she said.
“We don’t want him to go to jail if he has mental problems because sometimes [mental patients] couldn’t control themselves.
The disturbing incident came a day after a man was arrested for murdering a Chinese food delivery boy in Queens over an argument over duck sauce, and amid a spike in hate crimes against people of Asian descent in the United States.
Xie said she was worried about the safety of her all-female staff during the pandemic and had even started shutting down 4 Choices & A Soup earlier as more homeless and unstable people gathered. on Roosevelt Avenue in recent years.
“Our restaurant has been open for 18 years. We have never had this kind of situation. I’m so surprised he’s Chinese and he’s [an] old man,” she said of the suspect, believing he was over 50.