Orthodox store owner in Brooklyn the latest serial murder victim

JTA — Three Brooklyn store owners, two of them Orthodox Jews, have been murdered at work by the same gunman, according to New York police.

The latest murder, in the Flatbush neighborhood, was on Nov. 16 in the store of Rahmatolla Vahidipour, 78, of Great Neck, NY. Vahidipour was shot in the head and chest in his She She Boutique, and then dragged to the back of the store and covered with clothes, according to the New York Daily News.

The newspaper cited police sources as saying the shell casings from the murder matched those of two other Brooklyn store owners who also were found dragged to the backs of their stores.

Vahidipour, who came to the United States from Iran, was scheduled to attend the bar mitzvah of one of his nine grandchildren, according to the newspaper.

In August, Isaac Kadare, 59, an Orthodox Jew born in Egypt, was shot in the head and stabbed in the neck in his Amazing 99 Cent Deals store in the Bensonhurst neighborhood.

A month earlier, Mohammed Gebeli, 65, a Muslim originally from Egypt, was shot in the neck and killed in his clothing store in the Bay Ridge section.