Hazmat suit-wearing gunman identified by what lied underneath: Manhattan prosecutors

Kimond Cyrus, the ex-con accused of killing a popular grocery store clerk and ripping off at least three other stores, was identified because he left the front of his hazmat suit open during his crimes, exposing the similar clothing he wore in each crime, prosecutors said Friday.

Cyrus, 39, wore different hazmat suits during different robberies, but the clothing he wore underneath was the same — camouflage pants and dark-colored sweatshirt with white writing — Manhattan Assistant District Attorney Gregory SanGermano said at the suspected murderer’s arraignment at Manhattan criminal court.

Surveillance footage of Cyrus without the hazmat suit, but wearing the clothes he had on during the killing, helped detectives identify him, SanGermano said.

“Because he was tracked before and after the incident, the clothing the defendant was wearing before and after the murder is important,” SanGermano said.

Cyrus was ordered held without bail on murder and weapons possession charges Friday. Wearing a brown jacket, a blue sweatshirt and jeans, and a blue surgical mask, the ex-con remained quiet during the brief arraignment proceeding, only answering with a “Yeah,” when he was asked if he understood what was happening.

A search warrant was being executed on his Bronx apartment Friday, prosecutors said.

He was caught near his Bronx home about 10:40 a.m. Thursday after members of the NYPD’s Homicide and Shootings Enhancement Team tracked video surveillance footage from one of his crimes right to his front door.

The ex-con is accused of robbing two stores in Brooklyn before heading into the Daona Gourmet Deli on the Upper East Side on March 3 and shooting worker Sueng Choi, 67, while pistol-whipping him during a botched robbery, cops said.

The bullet went through Choi’s left hand was and through the top of his forehead, according to court documents.

After killing Choi, Cyrus jumped on a moped and sped off into the Bronx, where, about 22 minutes later, he robbed the Ya Ya Deli on Melrose Ave. and E. 160th St., cops said.

Police later found one of his hazmat suits behind a building that was a five-minute walk from the Bronx deli that Cyrus robbed, police said Thursday as they announced his arrest.

The first break in the case came Sunday when a tipster called the NYPD’s Crime Stoppers hotline and reported seeing the suspect, wearing military fatigues and riding a blue moped, entering the Camilla Grocery near Crotona Park in the Bronx.

A worker at Camilla Grocery told the Daily News that a customer told police that he had seen Cyrus hanging out outside the store on the same day of the killing, although he never robbed the place.

Cops took the store’s surveillance footage on Monday, the worker, who would only identify himself as Alberto, said.

Detectives searched the area and found more footage of Cyrus wearing the same clothes he wore under the hazmat suit on the night of the murder, as well as footage of him putting on the protective outfit, according to court documents.

“This was good old-fashioned police work,” Mayor Adams said at a Thursday press conference.

Customers had worried about Choi working overnight shifts alone.

“He knows it’s a dangerous place to work,” Choi’s ex-wife Jenny Chon, 66, told the Daily News earlier this week. “I don’t talk to him much, but every time I talk to him on the phone, maybe once a year, he tells me it’s dangerous.”

Cyrus plead guilty to felony assault in 2003 after a violent Midtown Manhattan attack a year earlier. He beat a man and sprayed him in the eyes with a liquid that burned him before hitting him over the head with a glass bottle, records show. As his victim lay on the sidewalk, Cyrus swiped his wallet from his pocket.

He also has a 2009 arrest for operating a motor vehicle while impaired and a 2020 arrest for jumping bail in Mount Vernon.

Cyrus’s attorney Adam Freeman said Friday that he plans on putting up a “vigorous defense.”

Choi’s murder prompted a plea from the NYPD and Adams for store owners to ask customers to unmask themselves upon entering a shop — at least long enough for their faces to be seen.

On Thursday, Adams told reporters that masks make police work and identifying suspects more difficult.

“Face masks protected us from COVID but it is really allowing criminals to exploit this,” Hizzoner said while holding a black surgical mask. “We can have public safety and health. They go together.”