This is all around a sad story.
And an infuriating one.
You may recall Jose Alba, the Manhattan bodega worker charged with murder after grabbing a knife and killing the violent ex-con who attacked him.
Public pressure later forced George Soros-funded district attorney Alvin Bragg to drop the charges and release Alba from New York’s notorious Rikers Island jail, where he initially had been held on $250,000 bail (half what Bragg’s office wanted).
Bodega clerk Jose Alba leaves NYC ‘afraid for his life,’ mulls move back to Dominican Republic: report https://t.co/kDNgHKFo7M
— Fox News (@FoxNews) August 7, 2022
Traumatized by the attack, stabbing and his criminal “justice” encounter, Alba is leaving the U.S. and returning to the Dominican Republic, perhaps permanently, according to the New York Post.
While district attorney Bragg is quick to go after a man defending himself, many New Yorkers are fed up with his otherwise soft-on-crime stance and want him gone, the Post reported.
Following his ordeal, Alba has taken a low profile, initially escaping to the tranquility of upstate New York.
Will lack of the rule of law drive more people away from the U.S.?
“He is not going back to work at the bodega,” according to Francisco Marte, who heads a bodega association assisting Alba. “He is taking a break fighting with his trauma, and he said he is afraid for his life.
“He is trying to get back to normal, but he said it’s very hard when you have flashbacks of what happened. We are getting him professional help.”
“The scars will be there for life. It’s going to be a reminder of what happened and the tragedy he went through.”
Marte said Alba and his family will decide if Alba goes to the Dominican Republic temporarily or permanently.
On July 1, Alba was working behind the counter of the bodega and got into an argument with a woman over payment for a bag of chips.
She called her boyfriend, Austin Simon. Simon came behind the counter and attacked Alba, who grabbed a knife and stabbed and killed Simon.
Alba called the police, who arrested him on second-degree murder charges. Protests followed, including those of Mayor Eric Adams and Bill Bratton, former NYPD commissioner.
Authorities lowered Alba’s bail, setting him free, but his employers, concerned about vengeance from Simon’s family, wouldn’t let Alba return to work.
On July 19, Bragg’s office dropped the charges, filing a motion saying there wasn’t enough evidence to show Alba “was not justified in his use of deadly physical force.”
If Alba moves back to the Dominican Republic, he won’t be the first to flee unruly Democrat-controlled areas for Latin America.
Californians are moving to Mexico in such large numbers it has unsettled the locals there.
While World Population Review implies “third world” is no longer to be used in polite company, Dominican Republic ranks 73.6 on the review’s Human Development Index, just behind Fiji and Mongolia, each at 74.1 (the U.S. at 92.4).
Here’s another perspective — I have a relative living in Puerto Rico, itself not a great example of prosperity. He says there are aggressive efforts in that U.S. territory to keep out people illegally attempting to enter from the nearby Dominican Republic.
But Alba may feel better living there than risking the horrors of what happened to him in Manhattan.
