NEW YORK (AP) — A former employee was arrested in the deadly shooting of a 19-year-old cashier working a late-night shift at a Burger King restaurant in East Harlem, a crime that appalled New Yorkers including the mayor.
The New York Police Department said Friday that Winston Glynn, 30, was facing charges including murder in the death of Kristal Bayron-Nieves. Police said she was killed during an armed robbery shortly before 1 a.m. Sunday.
“There was no reason to shoot this young woman,” said NYPD Chief of Department Kenneth Corey. “Money had been handed over. She was trying to comply with the gunman’s demands. She was killed for no apparent reason.”
Police said there were two customers and two employees in the Burger King when the gunman entered and took money from a cash register. He demanded more and Bayron-Nieves was in the process of trying to open another register when she was shot, police said.
Bayron-Nieves’ family has told reporters she was three weeks into the job and worried for her safety working at night. The teen wanted to switch to a day shift, relatives said.
The man fled, and police used surveillance video in the area to track him to the subway system and from there to Brooklyn. Police said they arrested Glynn, who had worked at that Burger King for several months in 2020, on Thursday in that borough.
Glynn, who police said has a prior arrest record and has an open case against him for menacing, was in custody and there was no information on an attorney for him.
Mayor Eric Adams has repeatedly spoken out about the shooting. He visited Bayron-Nieves’ family Monday and was at the press conference announcing the arrest.
“When I visited Kristal’s mother and just saw the pain on her face and saw how much this tore her apart … Sometimes we report these incidents as just mere numbers,” he said. “These detectives understood that Kristal was not a number. They carried out their job.”
