Restaurant Deliveryman Stalked & Killed After Dispute Over Duck Sauce

Source: Spencer Platt / Getty

While mass shootings continue to plague America thanks to a certain political party’s reluctance to enact common sense gun laws, regular gun violence has also been problematic across the board, especially in New York City.

According to The New York Times, the latest (and weirdest) arrest due to a gun-related homicide went down this week when police arrested 51-year-old Glenn Hirsch for the cold-blooded murder of a food deliveryman, Zhiwen Yan, back in April. The reason? Duck sauce. We’re not even joking.

Last April, Hirsch followed Yan as he left the Great Wall restaurant he worked for to make his deliveries. Angry about not getting a refund he requested months earlier for not getting enough duck sauce with his order, Hirsch waited until Yan halted at a stoplight on an intersection in Forest Hills, Queens before opening fire on him and hitting him once in the chest. Evidently Hirsch was booked for murder and was indicted on Thursday (June 2) at the Queens Supreme Court where he pleaded not guilty to the charges levied against him.

“A petty dispute over a takeout order became an obsessive point of contention for the defendant who began to stalk and harass employees at the restaurant for months,” Melinda Katz, the Queens district attorney, said in a statement on Thursday.

Mr. Hirsch’s lawyer, Michael D. Horn, said the authorities had “arrested the wrong man.”

“Glenn Hirsch is only guilty of having an argument, according to the police, when his meal order was not made the way it was supposed to be done,” Mr. Horn said.

In November of 2021, Glenn Hirsch and Zhiwen Yan got into an argument as Hirsch complained that he didn’t get enough duck sauce packets with his order and wanted his money back. Even though he was given extra duck sauce packets, Hirsch still insisted on a refund before calling the police to whom the workers explained that the reason they wouldn’t take the food back was due to fear of the Coronavirus.

In the following weeks, Hirsch made his anger and presence known to the employees of the Great Wall and even damaged the car of one of the workers. When they hopped out the restaurant to stand up to him, that’s when Hirsch showed his cray-cray side.

When Mr. Yan and his co-workers confronted Mr. Hirsch, prosecutors said, he told them, “I have a gun” and “Be careful, this is the last time I’m going to tell you.”

About a month after that altercation, Mr. Hirsch showed up at the restaurant again, and pointed a gun at an employee who was shoveling snow, prosecutors said.

“How’s your car? Remember me?” Mr. Hirsch said, according to the news release. “I will kill your entire family.”

The worker rushed into the restaurant and called the police. When he went back outside, Mr. Hirsch was gone but the tires on a worker’s car had been slashed, prosecutors said.

Prosecutors say that on April 30th, Hirsch dropped his wife off at home before making his way to the restaurant on Queens Boulevard and drove past it seven times between 7:30 and 9:30 before finally peeping Zhiwen Yan making his way to his car and ultimately taking his life. Yan was taken to Elmhurst Hospital Center and pronounced dead.

Yan is survived by his wife and three children.

Though Hirsch insists he’s innocent of the charges, it’s not looking good for him given his history with the restaurant. He faces life in prison if he’s convicted of the murder.