OFF-DUTY COP KILLS TWO THUGS AT BROOKLYN DELI

Monday,December 25,2000

By LARRY CELONA, PHILIP MESSING, JENNIFER VITALE, and TRACY CONNOR

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An off-duty detective shot and killed two bandits who held up the Brooklyn grocery store where he was working with his wife and two young children last night, police said.
Detective Mike Zeller opened fire because he thought one of the robbers was about to shoot him after the other emptied the register, sources said. “The worst thing about it is my kids were right there,” a shaken Zeller told a colleague after the Christmas Eve bloodshed.

The violence unfolded around 6 p.m. as Zeller was preparing to close up his mother-in-law’s Two Flag Deli on Franklin Street in Greenpoint – and head to a holiday celebration.

His family was in the small store – his wife behind the register, his 5-month-old son in a car seat, and his 3-year-old daughter on a chair. A man walked in and asked whether the deli made sandwiches, then left, supposedly to ask a friend outside what kind he wanted. Zeller, a 16-year veteran who is a member of the Detectives Endowment Association Board, got a bad vibe and glanced outside, where he saw the two men talking.

A few moments later, one of the men walked into the store, pulled out a loaded .22-caliber handgun, announced a holdup and made the cop get on the floor. The second robber walked in, pushed Zeller’s wife aside and started emptying the register. “Don’t hurt me and my family,” Zeller said he pleaded. “Take what you want.” As the suspect who emptied the register got ready to leave, Zeller saw the other thief raise up the weapon, while still keeping it pointed at him, he told friends. Believing the man was about to shoot him, he pulled out the gun he’d been holding, carefully concealed at his side, and opened fire – hitting the gunman, sources said.

He jumped up and grabbed the second man by the coat. As the man spun around, Zeller saw he that he, too, had a weapon – believed to be a knife – and he opened fire again, sources said.

Cops identified the men as Jonathan Lynch, 32, of Brooklyn, a parolee with nine arrests for drugs and robbery, and James Culbson, 42, of Queens, who also had a record of robbery arrests.

Neighborhood residents were horrified.

Barbara Petrie, who lives near the deli, said,”We’ve been in the neighborhood for many years and nothing like this has ever happened. And on Christmas Eve, it’s just terrible. But people are people, and some are crazy enough to do something like this