LOCALS REMEMBER SLAIN STORE WORKER BUBACARR CAMARA, AS SUSPECTS REMAIN AT LARGE

BNC Merchandise, the store where Bubacarr Camara was killed last Thursday is now the site of a growing memorial, with flowers, notes and even a coconut. Camara, a 26-year-old who had just moved to the Bronx from Gambia 10 months ago, was apparently beaten to death in the store on Amsterdam between 104th and 105th streets in what police believe was a botched robbery attempt.

Camara had a wife and young son at home in Gambia and had come to the U.S. to earn money at his family’s store, according to a report in the Times. He was known as a generous and loving young man and a fantastic soccer player.

The family would often allow customers to take items like candy or shirts on credit if the customers didn’t have enough money to pay, said Miriam, who works at a taxi dispatch service a couple of doors down. “It’s so sad,” she said. “They just were trying to make an honest living.”

“You was like my brother to me,” read one note at the memorial site.

The three men wanted in connection with his death have not yet been apprehended, although police have offered a reward and released surveillance images. A story in the New York Press notes that two of the men wanted for Camara’s homicide may have been involved in another robbery in Harlem.

“Police believe the people who killed a shopkeeper at an Amsterdam Avenue T-shirt shop during a robbery attempt Thursday afternoon could also have robbed a similar store at gunpoint in Harlem early Tuesday morning.