Maniac was ‘hell-bent’ on getting to beloved NYC deli worker

A maniac who stabbed a beloved Brooklyn deli worker appeared “hell-bent” after an earlier scuffle with the frightened father — despite his own mother’s screams for him to stop, witnesses said Saturday.

The fight at the NY Deli & Mini Market Corp. at the corner of Hegeman and Van Siclen avenues in East New York broke out just after 3 p.m. Friday, cops said.

The worker, Diego Sandoval Nava, was rushed to Brookdale University Hospital Medical Center where the father of three, including a nerwborn, died, cops said.

The unhinged knifeman fled the scene and has not been captured, an NYPD spokesman said.

Ivor Dowridge saw some of the attack when he went into the store to use the ATM and said three workers were trying to hold the berserk attacker back.

It is unclear what led to the fight.

“He was hell-bent on going after the guy,” Dowridge, 63, said. “The victim looks scared. I saw his face, I saw it in his eyes.”

The maniac put his hands down and walked out of the store, but returned a short time later with a knife, he said.

“When I was leaving the store, I saw him running back in,” Dowridge said. “I saw him going in his pocket.

“His mom was outside shouting at him as he was going back, ‘What the f–k are you doing? What the hell are you doing?’ ”

Dowridge, a union worker who lives in the area, knows the stabber, who was out of work, has two kids and gets help from his mother, he told The Post.

“He just had to walk away and nothing like this would’ve happened,” he said. “You stabbed somebody, your life is over.”

A 45-year-old woman who works nearby said Nava always made her breakfast. 

“Once you became a regular, he knew what you wanted and you didn’t have to tell him,” the woman, who asked to remain anonymous, said. 

“He was very humble, did not speak much, just did his job – very nice guy,” she said. “It’s heartbreaking. I bought a candle to put outside the store in his memory.”

Republican mayoral candidate Curtis Sliwa, who was at the deli, called working at a bodega “the most dangerous job in the city.”

“It goes against the grain of what we’ve been told by both Mayor Adams and (Police Commissioner) Jessica Tisch: It’s a perception of crime,” he said. “Well, if you happen to be behind a bodega counter, you know it ain’t no perception. It’s reality every day.”