It happened on Monday, January 30th at 6:16 p.m. inside the Food Bazaar on Junius Street.
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The whole incident was caught on camera.
The suspect left the store and got on a B14 bus.
Potato chips are typically served with barbecue, not smoked over an open flame.
The grocery store's display of chips turned into a stubborn inferno.
Store employees took several runs at it with water.
They used bottles of water and a hose from the bakery department until they finally put the fire out.
"At any point did you think the store would go up in flames?" Eyewitness News Reporter Darla Miles asked.
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"Yes," said Courtney Moore, Food Bazaar supervisor. "I think they were trying to put out the most intense one first."
"So there were multiple fires going on at one time?" Miles asked
"Yes," Moore said.
The potato chip end cap was the biggest fire.
Video showed the suspect casually lighting it up and then walking away.
Once that got going, the store says the suspect set a smaller fire to a display in the center of another aisle.
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Dury Rodriguez is seen on video pouring juice on both fires.
He said that there was so much smoke, employees told everyone to get out of the store.
The suspect was seen in surveillance video smoking and then unsuccessfully attempting to set two fires, before he got to the chip display.
There were no injuries.
The suspect is described as 5'03" and 115 lbs. He was wearing a black ski cap and a black parka with a fur-trimmed hood.
Anyone with information in regards to this incident is asked to call the NYPD's Crime Stoppers Hotline at 1-800-577-TIPS (8477) or for Spanish, 1-888-57-PISTA (74782).