Last call nearly came too soon for a Bronx restaurant owner shot twice after bouncing a boozed-up customer.
Mario Ramirez, co-owner of the El Ray de Copas Restaurant, survived the Friday attack where a soused shooter — infuriated when he was flagged as too drunk for a nightcap — pulled his gun and opened fire.
Ramirez, 52, was first shot in the chest from close range by the inebriated attacker. The shooter then blasted the bleeding victim in the neck as he was lying on the restaurant floor.
The married father of three underwent two surgeries at Jacobi Hospital as cops hunted the fugitive gunman who pulled a phony gun in the same restaurant two years ago, according to the injured man’s brother Gustavo.
“I just went over to talk to him,” Gustavo told the Daily News about his brother. “He opened his eyes and opened his mouth and tried to talk, but he couldn’t just yet.”
Police released security video Friday night showing a suspect, wearing glasses, a gray jacket and dress shoes entering the bar before the 1 a.m. gunfire in the White Plains Road restaurant. There was no video of the actual shooting.
The suspect was smashed when he arrived — and asked for the manager when a waitress refused to serve him, according to police sources.
When Ramirez came over and asked the man to leave, he pulled a gun and fired at the co-owner as five terrified witnesses watched, the sources said.
The shooter reportedly works at a Bronx gun shop.
“He was drunk and because of that, we didn’t serve him,” said Gustavo Ramirez, 49, co-owner of the family business. “That was the motive for the shooting.”
Gelges Espinad, 40, who owns the business next door to the restaurant, said he thought the gunshots were firecrackers — until he heard a lady screaming “He’s been shot! He’s been shot!”
He walked inside the restaurant to see Mario covered in blood on the floor.
“He’s a very nice guy — polite, very humble,” said Espinad, owner of the USA Martial Arts Center. “His big issue is he doesn’t like people to come in after they’re drunk. I think that’s what happened.”
Gustavo Ramirez said he was planning to work that night until his older brother told him to take the night off.
“My brother said, ‘Don’t worry, everything is fine,'” said Gustavo. The siblings, who immigrated from Mexico in the late 1980s, opened their own restaurants in New Jersey and the Bronx.
With Joseph Stepansky, Patricja Okuniewska
