NYC food vendor attacked with tire iron in alleged $20K extortion outside City Hall

On Saturday, a longtime food cart salesman at city hall was hit several times with a tire iron in the legs and back – eyewitnesses say a competitor’s enforcer tried to shake him for $20,000.

Izzad Hassan Suleiman, a 43-year-old father of three from Queens who has been selling hot dogs, kebabs and other items from a City Hall park food cart for more than a decade, showed The Post a video of a gunman racing into a public square across the street. street from Brooklyn Bridge walkway around 8am

Suleiman stated that the man was driving in a white van with a lunch cart and almost crashed into it.

The alleged bespectacled intruder, who police identified as Felix Noel, then jumped out of the truck and ran like crazy across the square, the video shows.

He swung a yellow tire iron and hit Suleiman at least five times, leaving the salesman screaming in pain on the ground as his wife and children watched in horror.

Police said Noel, 62, was arrested and charged with assault and threats. He insisted on going back to his truck and putting on a Salvation Army cap before being taken away by the cops.

Suleiman, an Egyptian immigrant from Jersey City, claimed that Noel is just brawn and the brains behind the attack is the man who extorted money from food vendors.

He claimed that the man extorted $40,000 from him in 2018 and recently returned to demand another $20,000.

“He does this to everyone in the city, we know about this guy,” Suleiman said through a translator. “Now he wants more money, but this time we’re done with him… It’s a busy area, it makes a lot of money, and he wants this area.”

The seller, his family and friends claim to have complained to the police, but the man, whom they likened to a “mafia” and “thief in law”, repeatedly circumvented the law.

Neither the alleged thief in law nor Noel could be contacted for comment.

The video shows the alleged leader trying to stop the attacker from using the tire iron, at least once ripping it out of his hands and putting it back in the truck. However, Noel became even angrier when Suleiman and some of his entourage started filming a video of the incident on their smartphones – and attacked the salesman anyway, as seen in the clip.

Hours after the incident, Suleyman’s 12-year-old son Hasan said his father was taken to a local hospital and could barely walk due to back and leg pain. He expected his father to be on his feet in a few days.

The Saturday attack has been compared to a 2015 Post report about a Jewish kosher food vendor who claimed he was stopped for selling brisket sandwiches or pastrami from a Holy Rollers cart near Rockefeller Center.

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